How do the new Windows 8 App logos work? - c#

In the Windows 8 App manifest file, I see a handful of different fields. For example:
Logo
Wide Logo
Small Logo
Store Logo
Badge Logo
Splash Screen
Each of these also have their own scaled assets, too.
So, if I want to scale my app's image (since I usually create graphics with Fireworks or Illustrator), how do I properly set all of the images for my app? I would like to support all of the scales possible by re-sizing my image to fit the scaled values...or am I supposed to go about it differently by creating an image with multiple sub-scales within it? Is there a name for that? I'm a little bit confused here...essentially, how does this all work?

Here is a blog post from Jerry Nixon about logo resizing, he use Expression Design but it should be similar with Fireworks or Illustrator: http://blog.jerrynixon.com/2013/09/windows-81-says-forget-all-that-design.html

Check out this MSDN post
Choosing your app images
But I would recommend you to check out Jerry Nixon's this article.
Windows 8 apps need 28 logo varietals; enter Expression Design

Related

Prevent screen capturing softwares to capture an application screen

I am working on examination system, as a security part of the system I don't want anyone should leak the paper by screen recording or by giving remote using so many free applications for desktop sharing.
First I searched for can I block such applications? But I don't think so, as there so many ways to record/share a screen. Then I got to know about HDCP but I guess it will only application to videos and not to HTML (correct me if I am wrong). SO I want something like HDCP or VLC player's "directx video output" so that content doesn't get captured by printscreen or other screen capture techniques.
I guess D3D9/DDraw overlays are only for video content can I use this for HTML content/in a c# based windows application?
I have achieved this by using SetWindowDisplayAffinity, as per MSDN
The display affinity setting. This setting specifies where the window's contents are can be displayed. Set this value to WDA_MONITOR to display the window's contents only on a monitor. Set this value to WDA_NONE to remove the monitor-only affinity.
So setting WDA_MONITOR to handle of WinForm makes it black when print screen or desktop recording or in desktop sharing application.
Image captured through mobile:
However, I am open for any other (better) answer for this.

uwp c# NotificationsExtensions GroupIcon

How do I get this group icon (see image below) appear? In my app, the NotificationsExtensions use for toast notifications, but this icon is not displayed. How can I set it?
You can specify an image as visual with type AppLogoOverride See also: MSDN Doc
If you don't specify explicit this logo, the system will draw the app's logo from the package.appxmanifest.
Note in the anniversary update (1607 or 14393) the action center UI is quite different.
Image Size – we made some adjustments to the image sizes to make the
notification content richer and more informative. The application icon
has shrank to 16px by 16px. The AppLogoOverride (when provided) has
been enlarged to 48px by 48px. Therefore, make sure your
AppLogoOverride image is at least 48px by 48px (and provide higher
resolution versions for the different scale factor devices). Blog post

Create GIF from images in a Windows Phone app

My question is easy: Is it possible to create an animated GIF file from a Windows Phone app (7.8 or 8, or both) using C# ?
I searched on the internet for this and I found these tutorials:
http://bloggingabout.net/blogs/rick/archive/2005/05/10/3830.aspx
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/11505/NGif-Animated-GIF-Encoder-for-NET
They are really cool and work perfectly for desktop app, but I can't make them work on a Windows Phone app, many classes are unavailable and I can't find a workaround. Is it really impossible to create a GIF file from images on a Windows Phone ? Is it due to the devices limitations ?
Thanks
Ok i don't know how far Ill be able to help. But if you are facing limitations in displaying a gif Image then you can use a nuget package named image tools
Blog for Image tools
And on the other hand if you want to display a number of images then I can suggest a work around. But it will be app specific.
use storyboards or timers to continiously animate an Image object or a Grid back ground.
Creating an image I guess is not possible due to device limitation
still if you have a sprite image
then you can use
<ImageBrush.Transform>
<TranslateTransform X="-380" Y="200" x:Name="tfDieImage"></TranslateTransform>
</ImageBrush.Transform>
Transforms to animate the image at regular intervals by changing the X and Y :)
In fact there is a very interesting way to create animated GIF. It is from VB6 days.
Just create every frame as separate GIF file with same color palette (this is the tricky part). strip GIF header from files except first file and then concatenate them with following magic 0x0021F9.
Animated GIF format is actually an extension to the GIF format so, application does not understand animated GIF can still be able to display first frame. As far as I remember that each frame can have its own color table, but I do not remember how.
The real trick is to create series of images sharing same color palette, which I haven't done it before. I just used this to load animated GIFs.
Why don't you try to do it by yourself? GIF format now is free, so if you need only to create GIF files, you can just implement specification or only part of it.
http://www.w3.org/Graphics/GIF/spec-gif89a.txt
Ok.
I will suggest you one post that shows that how to display a GIF formatted pictures or Animated pictures in windows phone.
Please Refer this link.
Show OR Create the GIF kind Images in windows phone.
This shows that there is like a GIF image but actually there is not a GIF but its a multiple jpeg files Array.
I hope you get the Solution.
Good Luck.

How to show a gif image in WinRT?

I am trying to show NON ANIMATED gif images in my WinRT app. My current solution is to use a server side converter to convert the images to png, and then load them into an Image control. I have limited bandwidth and would prefer to do it in-app. I used .Net Image Tools to do this on Windows Phone, but it does not appear to be available for Windows RT. I cannot show the images in a WebView because I need to show another element over the image. I know this is a duplicate of this, but that was closed by users who thought it was a duplicate of a question asking about showing animated gifs. My question is how to show NON ANIMATED gifs, and I can't seem to delete the old question.
You can use the gif directly in XAML within the <Image> element. There is no need to convert it. Just set the Source attribute to the image.

Non-Square Icon on Windows Form?

Is it possible to display an icon in the top left corner of a Windows Form that is a different shape than the standard 16X16 pixel icon?
It appears that Skype has an icon that is much wider than standard:
Is it possible in a Windows Forms app?
You can do this but it's probably more effort than it's worth just to have a larger icon.
Hans has posted an article that roughly points to the information needed to figure out an answer this question, but hasn't posted an answer itself and so I'll clarify.
The old (pre Vista) way to do this is to override the WndProc method on your form and handle the WM_NCPAINT message. Note that this means that you are now responsible for drawing the entire window frame (the window border, title, close / restore icons etc...), not just the icon - i.e. this is a lot of effort to do a relatively minor thing.
The newer (post Vista) way to do this is to use the DWM API - note that this API is not directly exposed through the .Net Framework and so you need to use P/Invoke for this in C#. The bit that you want to do is the section titled "Drawing in the Extended Frame Window", where you extend the area that you are responsible for drawing outside of the normal client area and into the window frame. This is less hassle than it used to be (you don't have to draw things like the close buttons), however still means that you take responsibility for a lot of things that you wouldn't normally, like hit-box testing for resizing and moving.
Basically its nowhere near as simple as providing a larger icon and for most applications its probably way more effort than its worth, however you can do this in C# and that article should get you started if you really want to give it a try.
I know your looking for a plain code way to do this, but I invite you to check out DevExpress manged (yes it's third party forgive me), just google it.. I seen this thread and I started asking questions at devexpress with support and got some impressive results that you might be interested in.
Here is the ticket I put in... http://www.devexpress.com/Support/Center/Issues/ViewIssue.aspx?issueid=Q399941
Here is the result... http://www.devexpress.com/Support/Center/GetSCAttachment.ashx?id=684270b5-faed-415e-9010-64338523f8cf
So Far I used this on Xp, Vista and Windows 7 without problems using winforms only.
I hope this helps or gives you another option if the windows API don't pan out like you want on different versions of windows.
Thanks,
David
Don't think it's an icon, if you mean precisely the ICO image format.
Considering the Skype window is definitely ownerdraw window, that image can potentially be whatever you want format.
The trick is, basically, render an image skipping the pixels of some color (background color) of the "icon", so render it in "transparency".
This article can give you a hint:
Drawing Transparent Images and Shapes using Alpha Blending
It's old, but always a good one.
Yes. Override WndProc and implement WM_NCPAINT.

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