Windows graphics

I follow this thread http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=8381

And asks.


Is the graphic presentation in Windows (past and today) very like the way websites are created today?

I guess to make a standard Windows button the designer have to create

eg. Three bitmaps pices

one for the left and right corner
one for the tile for the middle (which repeats acording to the text length)

I guess when MS first started out designing the Window a lot of work went into finding out a way to present it.

Spider

I don't think this is done very often (if at all) in Longhorn. The thing you're talking about where slices of images are pieced together in tables to help graphics stretch across a relative area typically involve raster images.

Longhorn uses Avalon to achieve true scaling with vector graphics. Vector graphics are made up of defined points, which allow them to scale (and do a variety of other things) much better than raster images.

Try this package to explore the power of vector graphics in your applications:

http://www.vgdotnet.com/

Err. I got the thread you were refering to confused with another one. Sorry.

If we're talking about Windows past and present, interfaces are typically drawn with GDI/GDI+.

Some applications (like Trillian, Winamp, etc) that support skins typically use raster images (bitmaps usually) and clip them and fit the pieces together in a manner similar to Web pages, yes.

My opinion is that GDI+ and vectors are the best way to draw interfaces.

But clipping raster images does give you the ability to add photographic detail to your interface that is hard to achieve with vectors. This is not always the best way to go though because you can't always tell exactly how they will appear on everyone's monitors and video cards. Plus it's much more difficult to allow the user to change the color or tint of the interface and customize it in other manners. And you don't get true scaling.

Here's a WMF ( renders bad)  40k



heres a JPG: ( same as above)  40k




Heres a flash vector: ONLY 2K!!!
 
http://www.gnuarts.com/ie.swf
( but you cant make it hyperlink ( stupid flash right click menu = useless)




Will longhorn FIX this?

In a perfect world - id be able to use WMF - that would be same file size as SWF - that renders and scales perfectly - but that IE treated just like a gif or jpg ( ie; regular ie right click menu - hyperlink / mouseover scripts - just wmf instead of jpg)

Here is an article explaining of how to create a "gel" button in VG.net similar to what you are talking about. You can do the same type of thing in Avalon. VG.net works in IE as well, but is a little complicated to set up, because of the reduced permissions for .NET code.

http://weblogs.asp.net/frank_hileman/archive/2004/05/10/129387.aspx

interesting - but ive spent 10 years learning CorelDraw ( and to some extend Illustrator -yuk)

I really dont want to do graphics in VG.net - although maybe tweak them

CorelDRAW! 12 exports to vector in any of these formats:

WMF, EMF, AI, CMX, CDR, SWF, and sort of EPS

im hoping longhorn ( ie7) supports rendering vector formats that are available in current apps
( as mentioned in other post - dont really need extra XML data .. just the ability to render vectors.. like WMF - as illustrated above

So suppose we added a file import function for VG.net, for one of those formats. Which do you think would be most useful? WMF?

VG.net is less of a simple rendering tool, than a whole animation runtime.