advanced designtime support for my robot usercontrol

Question

I have created a UserControl representing a onearm robot with IK capabilities, i.e. if set the x and y coordinates of the hand (both are simple double dependency properties) body, upper and lower arm move and rotate adequately. How can I add designtime support in cider and blend in a way that I can easily animate that robot by dragging the hand? If I drag the hand in cider or blend the x and y properties of the usercontrol should get updated automatically (the position and rotation of the arm will be calculated internally by the usercontrol). Also in blend when I am in animation recoridng mode I want a new keyframe to be created when I drag the hand. Just as it happens with any other object I drag in blend.

 

Is this generally possible? Do you have any tips for how to do this in VS 2008 Beta 2 and Blender 2 September CTP ?

 

I have found some preliminary documents about designtime support in cider here. But it leaves me with quite some questions:

1. Are the examples provided there supposed to work in VS 2008 Beta 2? Because I it looks like the adorners etc. never show up in cider or blend.
2. There was a talk about this at TechEd: DEV326 by Nakashima. The designtime support was demoed there. Maybe I am just doing something wrong. Could anyone provide me with the recording of this session? It's avaialable for free online but only for TechEd attendees.
3. Generally, is the programming model for designtime support in cider and blend the same? How do they compare? Will everything that works in cider work in blend as well? Obviously blender has quite a larger feature set and could therefore potentially have more features for designtime support too.

Answer 1

 

From your description, it sounds like design time adorners are what you are looking for.  For example you can have an adorner that you place over the hand and when you click and drag the adorner, you update the appropriate dependency properties you want to update.

 

Adorners are only supported in Cider, the only extensibility Blend provides is Property Inspector Category/Property Editors, Loading metadata and licensing.

 

To answer your questions:

 

1. Yes, there is a sample here: http://blogs.msdn.com/jnak/archive/2007/08/10/recording-of-my-teched-talk-on-cider-wpf-designer-design-time-extensibility.aspx  It's an attachment to the blog post that contains the slides from my TechEd talk as well as the sample project and it will work in Cider beta 2.  There is an adorner sample that will help you get started.

 

2. Unfortunately, that recording is only available to TechEd attendees.

 

3. Blend implements a subset of the design time extensibility that Cider supports.  So, yes, the model is the same between the two products, it's just that Blend doesn't support all of the features.  I have 2 slides in the TechEd presentation that outline the extensibility feature sets in Cider and Blend.

Answer 2

Jim Nakashima - MSFT wrote:

3. Blend implements a subset of the design time extensibility that Cider supports.  So, yes, the model is the same between the two products, it's just that Blend doesn't support all of the features.  I have 2 slides in the TechEd presentation that outline the extensibility feature sets in Cider and Blend.

 

Is there any document around on what this subset actually includes? What features will be supported in blend 2?

I see that PrimarySelectionContextMenuProvider, PrimarySelectionAdornerProvider are not supported in blend?

Looking at your samples I cannot manage to make the PopupButtonAdornerProvider and the CustomContextMenuProvider appear in blend 2 (sept 07). WIll the final msdn docs state which of those classes are supported in what designer?

Answer 3

I'm sorry, I had to correct my last post -- Blend only supports Property Editors, Metadata loading and Licensing.  No MenuActions and no Adorners.

 

Blend only supports a portion of the API in Microsoft.Windows.Design.dll

 

The Blend 2 feature set is not locked down yet, there is no public information about what will be supported in Blend 2.

 

Answer 4

So in blend there is is currently no way that the users of my controls could animate some custom dependecy property by dragging a custom designtime adorner using the timeline recording mode in blend? When a user drags or rotates a standard adorner in blend the rendertransform properties get animated and keyframes are added aoutmatically. I want the same thing to happen with my custom properties when the user drags my custom designtime adorner.

 

I suppose cider doesn't have and will not get any animation capabilities in VS 2008?

Answer 5

Correct on all counts.  Cider will not have a time line view or any other type of animation support.  Blend currently does not support adorner extensibility.

Answer 6

Since your last post, do you have any update on the extensibility features that will be included part of Blend2.

 

Christophe

 

Answer 7

Nothing planned.

 

Answer 8

 

I suppose it's not too long until blend2 will be released. Do you have any update on the extensibility features that will be included in Blend2.