I've been running around the web for a while now looking for a solution to this problem, but I'm quite disheartened by now to find something that will fit all of my requirements. So here goes.
I'm trying to build a desktop application that uses the Kinect for Windows sensor to control a visualization of digital library (as in, the place you go to for books) assets. I'm quite versed in using the official MS Kinect SDK and already have a neat utility framework for prototyping at hand, so I'd obviously love to make use of it. This plus the desktop app theme of things says the whole shebang will need to be in C#, which is fine by me.
On the other hand, the visualization part already exists and looks gorgeous, but it's JavaScript (and specifically, JIT i.e. javascript infovis toolkit). It has all the bells and whistles I need and it's neatly animated. Also, I'm a noob at JavaScript.
The point is, how do I avoid rewriting either one into the other's language while still allowing them to talk at runtime?
So, do you know any way to either
A) embed a JIT visualization (e.g. radial tree visualization) in a windows application in a way that allows me to manipulate the graph at runtime from a C# class (e.g. selecting a new node to be animated into focus) or
B) send C# events to JS to react to gesture input at runtime? Is this something ASP.NET can do?
I have a feeling the result will be a weird mix of desktop and web technology, but any pointers to the right sort of technology is greatly appreciated.
Maybe you should look at this projects about using Kinect with JavaScript:
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/kinectedbrowser/
http://kinesis.io/
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Apparently, there is a way to add C# XNA projects to websites such that they can be viewed on the site from a normal web browser, presumably there are concessions to safety that the browser will enforce.
How is this done?
edit: I think the C# project might only ever runs on the server, the client being sent something it can understand.
There is http://jsil.org which will convert a compiled .Net application into a client side Javascript "app" ... and has been demonstrated to work rather successfully on XNA games.
It only handles 2D stuff and sound is / was needing to manually rewritten last time I checked but it does a pretty impressive job from what I've seen of it.
It should be noted that whilst this may get the job done, it's certainly not going to produce JS that is anywhere near the quality (i.e. maintainability) of a game that was written in JS from the start (using something like three.js or easle.js)... so if this for a commercial product, you may wish to explore rewriting / porting the game specifically for web as a serious alternative.
This isn't possible without a plugin. The plugin would work only on Windows, obviously, since XNA is built on DirectX.
There's no plugin that currently does this, to my knowledge.
It's not difficult to write a plugin, however, you'd have to do this for each browser you want the plugin to run in.
If you want your game content on the web, a better route is probably HTML5 and its Canvas functionality, which works on all modern browsers. You might be interested in this article, which discusses porting a 2D XNA game to HTML5 Canvas.
If you need 3D support, you could go the HTML5 WebGL route, although Internet Explorer doesn't support it.
Probably what you want is Google Native Client (NaCl). I haven't played with it (yet), but as far as I know, some game engines like Unity works on it.
Hope it helps.
I need to rotate an image clockwise only just once after a certain operation. I felt so lazy to include rotating logic to my current image operations class then I come with this idea. What I need is already built within windows explorer, so is it possible to trigger windows explorer's rotate operations within a c# application for a valid file specified?
I have doubts that I can't access to that kind of functionality but I wanted to ask to make sure.
Thanks!
You're better off not relying on the feature since it is not part of the API and can disappear at any time. You should just do your own image rotation.
I don't think its possible to do it with Windows Explorer's integrated photo rotating, but you should check out the awesome image editing/processing library called ImageMagick. The original API is a native windows (dll) API, but there is a good .NET wrapper that is easy to use.
Here it is:
http://imagemagick.codeplex.com/
There are also wrappers for two dozen or so other languages, linked at ImageMagick's site:
http://www.imagemagick.org/
I'm trying to embed Windows-Sidebar-Widgets into my own .Net Application (WPF and C#), but I dont't realy know where to start. I googled a bit but only found SDK and tutorials for widget-development. I found that there is a small service in Windows, running the widgets. My thought was that I could perhaps fake this service and provide his functions whithin my programm, so that I can run and show the widgets.
Does anyone have some tips on how to do this? Or some experience in doing so? Perhaps there is even some kind of libary for that kind of stuff?
If this is not possible it is also an option to switch to an OpenSource widged-manager to use this widgeds, but this is only an emergency solution and the windows-gadgeds would be very appreciated.
Some information about my system:
I've written some kind of small windowmanager for childwindows in my application. And on the top of this I want to show the widgets in some kind of HostWindow.
Any hint will be appreciated.
P.S.: I would be willing to share the results if I (or we) get this working :-)
I've never seen a library for hosting gadgets, but since they are basically just websites you could use the MSHTML component to host any arbitrary gadget in theory.
This isn't to say it will be easy.
You'll need to extract a gadget to some temporary directory, spin up something hosting MSHTML (in WinForms WebBrowser would be convenient), navigate to the appropriate file in that temp directory (discovered by parsing gadget.xml), and shove something resembling the System object into the gadget.
As a starting point, inject some script that sets System = window.external; onload and WebBrowerser.ObjectForScripting = new FakeGadgetSystem().
FakeGadgetSystem will need [ComVisible(true)] and to implement a decent amount of stuff. I'd advise grabbing a widget or two to test with that mildly exercise the Gadget API, and then slowly implement the calls they make. It'll be a long haul for 100% compatibility with the official gadget hosting service.
I am not able to apply 3D effects on WPF's built-in WebBrowser, because it is just a thin wrapper around the native ActiveX-Webbrowser, which isn't based on WPF. I saw most of the places people suggested about one Link ,but I m not able to make it work in my application and it is having so many dlls which I don't want. Can anybody suggest me any other good alternative solution present then?
Maybe you forget to copy the needed awesomium.dll & AwesomiumProcess.exe with your executing assembly (which are not .Net assemblies).
I also have some difficulties to run with awesomium but it's not impossible.
I can recommand you the Troymium/TroymiumNet which is actively maintain by its developers.
I use it on Microsoft Surface to connect people to their facebook account.
I've never used it, but you could try Berkelium with berkelium-sharp.
I am about to write a front end app, which will be used as a media center app. It will plug directly into a high definition TV. Essentially transforming my laptop into a media player. While this concept is not new, I want custom functionality, so this is why I am not reusing existing products.
I'm a C# developer, so the app should ideally be written in C#. And there is 1 other consideration, I need to accept input via the MCE Remote.
I was considering using Silverlight for this. Would you recommend this? Or any other recommendations for frameworks before I begin planning around this.
Thanks in advance.
This is the type of stuff that the Windows Presentation Foundation was meant for. You'll get a lot more access to the hardware than Silverlight would provide (I.E. that MCE remote you mentioned). You mark up your UI with vector graphics/XAML, and then perform the logic with C#.
EDIT: WPF also has support out of the box for animations which can make your UI a lot more interactive.
EDIT 2: Scott Hanselman has written a really cool application called BabySmash and posted the source online. It basically intercepts keyboard input and shows shapes and sounds on the computer. It's a good "child-proofing" method for your PC. The code could provide you with some insight into WPF and how to do the animations and interactivity that you're looking for.
Is this a desktop app? If so I would use WPF. Silverlight is a subset of WPF, so using WPF you could potentially do more.
Silverlight or WPF, if you want some extra power. Both have a similar programming model (with XAML and code-behind) so you might be able to start with Silverlight and move up to WPF if you need.
The VLC api might be useful for playing your media, someone has created a C# wrapper for it:
http://wiki.videolan.org/.Net_Interface_to_VLC
WPF is certainly the way to go, and for playing media check out the excellent WPF MediaKit: http://wpfmediakit.codeplex.com/ I've used it successfully in many projects.