Two Ways to Create High-Quality Glassy Controls in XAML
Sep 12, 2009
“However, there is one design trick that I'd love to master to give my applications that killer look -- the ability to give a control, be that a logo, a menu bar, or whatever, the ultra-glossy appearance, and especially the appearance that I've seen in these water ripples applications of the control having a shiny layer of water on them.. I don't necessarily need to achieve the ripple effect, but I'd love to know how to achieve the water layer appearance.”
After receiving this in my e-mail box few days ago, I dug out two really amazing tutorials:
Blend Candy: Another Blue Glowing Glass Button in the style of Web 2.0
by LiquidBoy
Creating a Glass Button: The Complete Tutorial
by Martin Grayson
After clicking the above link, remember to check attachment CreatingTheGlassButton.zip that contains the actual complete tutorial on how to achieve the effect step-by-step in Blend.
This is the image from Martin's blog, just to get you hooked up!
The Cool Windows 7 Selection in XAML
Aug 26, 2009
Here's the XAML to make a selection rectangle similar to the one in Win7:
<Grid Height="22" Width="300" >
<Rectangle Stroke="#FF7DA2CE" RadiusX="2" RadiusY="2">
<Rectangle.Fill>
<LinearGradientBrush EndPoint="0.5,1" StartPoint="0.5,0">
<GradientStop Color="#FFDCEBFC" Offset="0" />
<GradientStop Color="#FFC1DBFC" Offset="1" />
</LinearGradientBrush>
</Rectangle.Fill>
</Rectangle>
<Rectangle Margin="1" Stroke="#FFEBF4FD" RadiusX="2" RadiusY="2" Fill="{x:Null}">
</Rectangle>
</Grid>