January 2015 – the Chad Kuehn weblog

I recently used a Resource Dictionary and wanted to be able to tweak the xaml components on it behind the scenes. This can be accomplished fairly easily:

In your project add a new class file. Give it the same name as the xaml.

In the newly created file override the contents of the namespace with this code:

public partial class Test1 //the class name

{

public Test1() //the class name

{

InitializeComponent();

}

Next, go to your <ResourceDictionary> tag in the xaml file. Add this property with the appropriate namespace and name: x:Class="namespace.classname"

Now the two should be linked up. In Visual Studio, however, they will not be nested like normal xaml files. This bugged me. I read online that the csproj file can be edited in notepad to accomplish this. I tried and for some reason I couldn’t get it to take. I did have success with VSCommands. It is an install that adds extra features to Visual Studio. Once installed select the xaml and cs with your mouse in the tree. Right-click and choose Group Items. Choose the xaml as the root item to be conventional. Now Solution Explorer should show them as paired.

You can easily invert the transparent parts of an image with Gimp. Gimp is an open source Photoshop alternative.

Follow these steps:

Choose Colors -> Components -> Decompose from the menu and set Color model to RGBA.
A new image is opened with all color channels (including alpha channel) decomposed as single layers.
Select the layer alpha and choose Colors -> Invert from the menu.
Choose Colors -> Components -> Compose from the menu, set Color model to RGBA and make sure the layers are correctly mapped to the channels (should default correctly if you did not reorder the layers)

It will open a few new Gimp tabs but it will, indeed, invert the transparent areas of the image. This worked well for me on an image of a single color with transparency.

Month: January 2015

Add Code Behind to a Resource Dictionary

Invert the Transparency in an Image with Gimp