Too Early For Silverlight 3?

Hi friends,
I am excited about what Silverlight 2 brings us. Still there are some features that we miss and might come in the next release. I have created a thread for Silverlight 3 Wish List in the Silverlight forums. Please add whatever you think might come in handy in next release. And yes Silverlight Team do care about the community.

A Simple Clock In Silverlight

Hi friends,
Friday one of my friends (Manasa) send me some unusual clocks developed in flash. That gave me the idea of making one of them (the easiest one) in Silverlight.
I made it like the following

Brief Explanation

The root canvas contains 7 canvases. Each of them holds seconds, minutes, hours and other texts and digits. Each of the canvas is wide enough to hold all the digits or text. The root canvas clips it to show only 450 pixel. The child canvases move right to left so it appears moving to the user.

Now lets see seconds panel. Others will be similar.

Seconds panel has 9 digits visible at any time. Total seconds panel contains all the digits and clipped by the root to show only 9 digits.
Seconds panel has got 69 digits 0 1 2 3.......58 59 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8. Last 9 digits are added because when we shift the panel from right to left at time the viewable part will be 59 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8.(half of 59 and half of 8) Then it will be again 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 and this time we can repeat the animation without letting user see any discontinuity.

Seconds, minutes and hours panels are been shifted through animations. Days, dates are updated once in an hour. Months are updated once in a day and years are once in a month. (Seeing it update will keep you open your browser at least a month though !!!)

When the application starts it updates so the red line shows current values.

You can find the complete code here.

Fractal Images -- Mathematics With Silverlight Again

Hi all,
When I first seen fractal images I was really impressed and wanted a bit try for making one myself. I have made a simple application that will generate some kool images based on fractal algorithms. This program is not for describing fractals, this is just to make some pretty images totally by complex mathematics.

here is one image that uses (Z * Z * Z + C) / (Z * Z * Z - C) formula and C=0.45 here. (C and Z are complex numbers)



You can make lots of images using different equation and different values of C.


How the Images are created.....

The image is actually a collection of 1 x 1 pixel ellipse different color. These ellipses are placed in a 500 x 600 Canvas. fractal algorithm determines how to color the ellipses and that is the only magic.

Algorithm.....

int iteration = 0;
do
{
R = (Z * Z * Z + C) / (Z * Z * Z - C);
Z = R;
iteration++;
} while (iteration < 100 && (R.Real * R.Real + R.Imaginary * R.Imaginary) < 4);

For coloring the ellipse

Random r = new Random(iteration);
byte red = (byte)r.Next(255);
byte green = (byte)r.Next(255);
byte blue = (byte)r.Next(255);
Plot(x, y, Color.FromArgb(255, red, green, blue));

Though it is using random number for same iteration value the color will be same as iteration is been used as seed for the random number. This is the beauty of pseudo numbers.

Here you can download the complete source code.

You can see the application running here.

One caution:- The code involve too many computation and placing 300000 ellipses. So it takes about 20 seconds to complete and might hang your browser during this time.

Here and here you can see details about fractals and algorithms.

I have updated some of my applications and posts in last few days. I will complete it as soon as I can.

SL 2 And All My Broken Applications

Silverlight 2 is released. Now it has some breaking changes that breaks all of beta 2 applications. Though Microsoft has given some time to update beta 2 application to RC0 so they will be compatible to final release I did not get time to update my applications that I will be doing when I get time. I will be making some other applications as well. I will have to update my posts so they are still relevant. Lots of changes....