How To Make A Beautiful Classic 3d Desktop In Windows
Since its original debut with the Windows x November 2015 update, Windows.UI.Composition has been empowering developers to build fast, beautiful, sweetness user interfaces in UWP and has been providing enhancements with every subsequent Windows release. At Build 2017, nosotros revealed what all of this continuous work has been leading up to: The Fluent Design System (aka 'Project Neon').
Moving from classic 'Flat Pattern' to Fluent Pattern requires the visual and performance capabilities that the Composition APIs offers along with the interop features that permit yous draw on this power from your XAML layer. In case you are not yet familiar with the concepts behind the Composition APIs, here's a quick refresher on what the Composition APIs are all near.
The Windows.UI.Composition namespace allows Universal Windows Platform (UWP) developers to utilise a new Visual Layer that will get them closer to the metal, graphically speaking, while still using familiar technologies like XAML and C#. Past getting closer to the metal, actually down to the system compositor level, developers are able to get great visual operation and custom UI experiences. By working through the XAML layer, developers get the ease of use they have come to await out of UWP. This is basically a best of both worlds scenario that puts great responsibility in the developer's hands. And with bully responsibility, as we all know, comes dandy power.
So why do you need all these graphical and UX superpowers? In addition to giving pizazz to your UWP apps, access to the organization compositor level likewise helps your users to attain their tasks faster and more fluidly. For instance, when you utilise Composition effects to mistiness a background in response to a click, you are focusing the user'south attention on her current job and removing distractions. This is the sort of subtle UI implementation that actually makes your user'south life easier – and it works best when your user doesn't fifty-fifty know that y'all did anything for them. They are just left with the impression that your app is easy to apply and feels fast, even if they tin can't exactly put their finger on the reason.
The Visual family
To improve understand the basic principles of Windows.UI.Composition, information technology's of import that we also introduce you lot to the visual family. In order to get fast and fluid effects, you need direct admission to something chosen the system compositor (sometimes also referred to as the DWM). The system compositor is doubter to the UI thread and doesn't actually care about being on the UI thread or blocking threads. Things happen very quickly at the system compositor level, where everything that is about to be sent to the display screen gets put together. This is also where you get to add additional effects if you desire to just earlier shipping all your visuals to the display.
The visual family lives down at that compositor level where things happen apace. The visual family is made upward of Visuals, ContainerVisuals and SpriteVisuals. The SpriteVisual class inherits from container visual, and the ContainerVisual class inherits from the base Visual class. There is likewise a Compositor course which acts as the senior member of the visual family unit. Information technology quite literally creates visual objects if yous need them and also manages the human relationship between an application and the system compositor process.
The visual family unit is a lot of fun. Allow'due south say your XAML, many levels to a higher place, has a Grid object. That Grid volition have a member of the visual family assigned to information technology. In technical parlance, we say that the Grid is backed past a visual. One time you lot grab concur of this backing visual, you can start to breathing it using the composition animation system. If it is a ContainerVisual, and so you lot can add together boosted visuals to information technology. Finally, you tin also create sprite visuals, using the compositor factory course, in society to add together castor effects to your visual using the Windows.UI.Composition effects system.
What's new for sugariness UI in the Windows 10 Creators Update
Several highly requested UI.Composition features have been added in the Creators Update to back up fast and fluid UI equally well as the Fluent Design Organisation, for case:
- SVG back up
- Normal and Virtual Surfaces
- Hover Interactions
- Implicit Evidence and Hibernate
- Expression Helpers
- Kickoff stomping fix
At first these can seem like small disconnected improvements. Brought together, even so, they volition make creating cute UI both faster and easier.
XAML support for static SVG files
Vector images are frequently better for icons and logos because they can be resized without losing paradigm quality. Before the Windows ten Creators Update, however, vector graphics were not supported in XAML and working with iconography in UWP typically involved multiple versions of every image to adapt for multiple DPIs. Now that that problem is solved, non only does XAML support static SVG files, simply they also work with the Composition APIs.
Normal and virtual surfaces
The CompositionDrawingSurface has been a core component of the Limerick APIs since the beginning, facilitating interop between XAML and Direct2D or Direct3D. The Creators Update is introducing the CompositionVirtualDrawingSurface for situations where only a portion of the content needs to be shown to the user at any given time. Information technology basically bridges the concepts of graphics culling in video games and the development of infinite lists in desktop enterprise apps.
Independent hover interactions off the UI thread
One of the most powerful things about the Composition APIs is that they allow furnishings and animations to run independently of your main UI thread at 60 frames per second. With the Creators Update, this feature will besides apply to hover animations in order to light up the many pointer activated effects that are a major function of fluent design.
In that location is besides a subtle computer etiquette benefit to this new characteristic. Take you lot ever watched a busy animation play while your app's UI was hanging and tried to motility your mouse around in circles to endeavor to make the animation go faster, but it has no effect? That is now a thing of the past.
Implicit show and hide
If you look at the code behind whatsoever UWP app, y'all will likely detect that a large portion of UI code is devoted to setting visibility properties on UIElements in gild to alternatively hibernate and show content. With this understanding, the Composition APIs at present allow you lot to associate animations with your visual elements that are implicitly triggered when yous hide or show them.
[code lang="csharp"]
ElementCompositionPreview.SetImplicitShowAnimation(MainContent, mainContentShowAnimations);
ElementCompositionPreview.SetImplicitHideAnimation(MainContent, mainContentExitAnimation);
[/code]
Implicit hide and bear witness animations allow yous to proceed using this basic UI metaphor while likewise making it easier to create elegant visuals around them.
Expression helpers
Expression animations provide a way to create mathematical relationships between limerick objects that can and then exist used to drive animations. The results of applying expression animations tin often exist scenic.
One piece of feedback we received almost how nosotros implemented expression animations is that it depends heavily on long strings of text like the following:
[code lang="csharp"]
rotationAnimation.Expression = "ACos( ( (A.Offset.X * B.Offset.10) + (A.Offset.Y*B.Offset.Y) + (A.Offset.Z * B.Offset.Z) ) / ( Length(A.Offset) * Length(B.Showtime) ) )";
lineVisual.StartAnimation("RotationAngle", rotationAnimation);
[/code]
The phrase "magic number" may even accept been raised with respect to this. Merely in time for the Creators Update, the Expression Builder Library is being introduced to provide you with blazon safety, IntelliSense and autocompletion as y'all create your own amazing expression animations.
Translation property
In earlier versions of the Composition APIs, at that place was a complexity in the way UIElement properties were shared between the XAML layer and the Visual Layer that could crusade the bodily position of the visual to exist overwritten or "stomped" in response to layout changes. While in that location was a workaround previously, there is now an bodily fix with the new translation property. To prevent offset stomping, you now merely need to enable the new Translation property through the ElementCompositionPreview class.
[code lang="csharp"]
ElementCompositionPreview.SetIsTranslationEnabled(Rectangle1, truthful);
[/code]
This is one of those bug that, if you've run into it before, you will experience a slight sense of relief. Simply add a mental bookmark for yourself most the Translation property until yous need to use it.
The sample gallery
The all-time manner to deep dive into Windows.UI.Composition is by pulling downwardly the sample lawmaking that the Composition team created and published to Github. The Windows UI Dev Labs samples, as they're called, are all-encompassing and visually rich. The samples extend from simple photo effects to complex parallax animations on XAML controls.
Don't hesitate. It's hard to really grasp the magnitude of the visual capabilities you lot are getting with Windows.UI.Limerick until you encounter for yourself all that it empowers you to exercise.
Wrapping upwardly
In addition to diving into the sample gallery on Github, which is highly recommended, you tin can as well learn more than almost Windows Composition through the following articles, videos and weblog posts.
- UI.Limerick Overview on MSDN
- Creating Fluid and Cute UI Using the New Visual Layer
- Bring fluid, responsive, and highly scalable UI Experiences to your Universal Windows Apps with the new Visual Layer
- What'south new and coming for Windows UI: xaml and composition
- Explore the next generation of innovative UI in the Visual Layer
- Rob Mikhayelyan'south Windows Composition Blog
- Mike Taulty's Windows Composition Blog posts
Source: https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2017/06/22/sweet-ui-made-possible-easy-windows-ui-windows-10-creators-update/
Posted by: ashbeills81.blogspot.com
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