WinRT XAML Toolkit

New Post: How to Create A Simple Line Chart

rodrigocarfer — Sun, 19 May 2013 19:36:04 GMT

Hi, I appreciate a lot your work doing this toolkit, however I'm having a hard time to create a simple Line chart to my Windows 8 App, since there is no documentation it's hard for me to understand what I should do ... I was unsuccessful at running the sample given in the package, so I was wondering if you could help me out just providing a Example of code that creates the Line Chart in the .xaml and the .cs file that includes values to the chart.

Thanks a lot in advance !

New Post: Chart axis label modification

pietras99 — Sun, 19 May 2013 14:56:17 GMT

Hello!
My target is to disable axis labels in a chart (chart contains three LineSeries). I can't figure out how to modify them. Any ideas or known solutions?
Thanks in advance.

Updated Wiki: Home

xyzzer — Sun, 19 May 2013 06:38:59 GMT

Project Description
A set of controls, extensions and helper classes for Windows Runtime XAML applications.

Disclaimer
This project is not managed by Microsoft. Its coordinator is currently employed by Microsoft, but the project has mostly been developed earlier and continues to be developed outside of work hours.
It is not a full port of the Silverlight Toolkit, though it includes ported versions of some of its controls. This does not diminish the value of the code that is part of it and that you are free to use and modify. Attribution is welcomed, but not required.

How do I use it?
Download the full source code or just the snippet you find useful. Be sure to try the samples! Find me on twitter to ask any questions.

For compiled version use NuGet

Features

Integrated extensions from the AsyncUI library - a set of extension methods for UI classes that add support for async/await to wait for events such as:
- Wait for a BitmapImage to load
- Wait for a Button or one of a list of buttons to be clicked
- Wait for a FrameworkElement to load, unload or become non-zero-sized
- Wait for all images in a FrameworkElement's visual tree to load
- Wait for a MediaElement to change state - eg. to start or finish playback
- Wait for a Selector (e.g. ListBox) to change selected item
- Wait for a Storyboard to complete
- Wait for a VisualState transition to complete
- Wait for a WebView to complete navigation
- Wait for a WriteableBitmap to load (uses polling due to lack of an event)

Controls
- AlternativeFrame, AlternativePage - support asynchronous page transitions and preloading pages so when navigation is initiated - all content might already be loaded. Includes 4 built-in transitions: dissolve, flip, push, wipe. You can add new ones yourself.
- AnimatingContainer - a container control that will animate its contents rotating or zooming in/out, eg. to make them feel more alive.
- CameraCaptureControl - supports displaying camera preview, capturing photos and videos, cycling between existing video capture devices, setting preference to Front/Back panel camera, etc.
- CascadingTextBlock - a TextBlock replacement that animates the individual letters in a cascade - fading in while falling down into position, then optionally fading out while falling down from the standard position.
- Chart - Silverlight Toolkit's Chart control ported by Mahmoud Moussa (ZeeMoussa on CodePlex) and merged from his Windows 8 Toolkit - Charts and More project. Supports pie charts, bar charts, scatter charts, etc.
- CountdownControl - a movie-style control that animates a ring-slice shape while counting down seconds - e.g. to take a picture with a camera after a given number of seconds (supports async/await).
- CustomAppBar - a custom implementation of the AppBar that automatically handles the three gestures to switch IsOpen (WinKey+Z, Right-Click, EdgeGesture), adds a CanOpen property, so you can prevent it from opening and opens/hides with a sliding animation when placed anywhere in the app, so you can layer content on top of it. Also features CanDismiss property to force the app bar to stay open in some situations, CanOpenInSnappedView which allows to block the app bar from showing up when the app is in the snapped view.
- CustomGridSplitter - a custom implementation of a GridSplitter as a templated control.
- DelayedLoadControl - given a content/DataTemplate - loads the contents after a given amount of time - e.g. to allow for staged loading of contents on screen.
- ImageButton - a custom Button control that takes one to three images to be used to represent different states of the button (normal/hover/pressed/disabled) as well as ways for the button to render all 4 states with just one or two images.
- ImageToggleButton - custom ToggleButton control, that like ImageButton - helps create buttons based on button state images using from 1 to 8 different state images and generating other state images with some simple image processing.
- InputDialog - a custom/templated dialog control that takes text input.
- ListItemButton - a simple button control with Click event and Command property to be used inside of list controls (the standard button steals pointer capture from the List/Grid~Items so they can't be selected.
- NumericUpDown - allows to display and manipulate a number using text input, +/- buttons or Blend-like swipe-manipulations
- PieSlice - a pie slice path/shape given StartAngle, EndAngle and Radius.
- RingSlice - a pie slice path/shape given StartAngle, EndAngle, Radius and InnerRadius.
- WatermarkTextBox - TextBox control with a watermark. Set WatermarkText to change the watermark prompt, change WatermarkStyle to change the style of the watermark TextBlock.
- WebBrowser - a templated control with a WebView + address bar, title bar, backstack navigation, favicon. work in progress (visual states are a bit messed up), but might be helpful as a starting point
- WrapPanel (ported from Silverlight Toolkit) - used for layout of child items in wrapping rows or columns - similar to the way text wraps on a page. Different than VariableSizedWrapGrid since it supports items of varying size and auto-sized rows or columns, but it is not a grid and so it does not explicitly support items spanning multiple cells without the use of negative margins.

Controls.Extensions
- AnimationHelper - two attached properties - Storyboard and IsPlaying. Allows to easily control Storyboard playback from a view model (note limitation - a single storyboard per control).
- AppBarExtensions.HideWhenSnapped - allows to make the AppBar automatically hide when the app goes to the snapped view.
- ContentControlExtensions.FadeTransitioningContentTemplate - allows to change content template with a fade out/fade in transition.
- ControlExtensions.Cursor - enables setting a mouse cursor to show when hovering over a control.
- FrameworkElementExtensions.ClipToBounds - automatically updates the Clip property to clip the contents of the element to its bounds.
- ImageExtensions.FadeInOnLoaded/.Source - allows to specify an image source such that the image fades in smoothly when the image source is loaded.
- ListBoxExtensions./ListViewExtensions
  - BindableSelection - allows a two-way binding of the SelectedItems collection on the Selector/list controls.
  - ItemToBringIntoView - allows to control which item should be visible through a view model binding without changing the selected item itself.
- RichTextBlockExtensions
  - PlainText - attached property that allows to easily single-way-bind plain text to a RichTextBlock (not really that useful other than for visualizing RichTextBlock styles in the sample app provided).
  - LinkedHtmlFragment - attached property that allows to easily single-way-bind plain text with HTML links (anchor tags) to a RichTextBlock to automatically generate links. Extension methods like SetLinkedHtmlFragment() and AppendLink() are also available.
- ScrollViewerExtensions.ScrollToHorizontalOffsetWithAnimation(), .ScrollToVerticalOffsetWithAnimation() - provide a way to scroll a ScrollViewer to specified offset with an animation.
- TextBlockExtensions/GetCharacterRect() - an extension method that returns a rectangle that holds a character at a given index in the TextBlock.
- TextBoxValidationExtensions - extensions that allow to specify the Format of the requested Text input as well as brushes to use to highlight a TextBox with valid or invalid Text.
- ViewboxExtensions.GetChildScaleX()/GetChildScaleY() - return the effective scale of the Viewbox Child.
- VisualTreeHelperExtensions - provides a set of extension methods that enumerate visual tree ascendants/descendants of a given control - making it easy to do these operations with LINQ as well as simple ways to list controls of a given type or find the first control of a given type searching up or down the visual tree.
- WebViewExtensions - extensions to get currently loaded page address, title, favicon, head tag's inner HTML.

Converters.
- BindingDebugConverter - helps debug bindings by allowing to trace or break whenever a binding gets updated.
- BooleanToDataTemplateConverter - given two DataTemplates (TrueTemplate and FalseTemplate) - converts the input value to the given template. A different take on DataTemplateSelector.
- BooleanToVisibilityConverter - the mother of all converters
- ColorToBrushConverter - converts a Color to a Brush
- DoubleToIntConverter
- NullableBoolToBoolConverter
- NullableBoolToVisibilityConverter
- SecondsToTimeSpanStringConverter - converts the number of seconds (a double type) to a TimeSpan - useful for configuring some animations

Debugging helpers
- VisualTreeDebugger - provides a trace of the visual tree structure when a control loads, its layout updates or it gets tapped as well as allowing the application to break in the debugger if one of these events occurs
- Debug/DebugConsole/DebugConsoleOverlay/DC.Trace() - enables tracing and displaying traced information right in the application on a collapsible panel
- DC.ShowVisualTree() - enables visualizing and manipulating visual tree of the application using a TreeView control and custom property editors

Imaging Extensions
- BitmapImageLoadExtensions - extensions to simplify loading BitmapImages based on StorageFile or file name
- ColorExtensions - Conversions between pixels and pixel buffer types of byte, int and Color
- IBufferExtensions - Adds a GetPixels() extension method to the PixelBuffer property of a WriteableBitmap that reads in the buffer to a byte array and exposes an indexer compatible to the one of the Pixels property in Silverlight's WriteableBitmap
- WriteableBitmap~ - a set of extension methods for a WriteableBitmap
  - WriteableBitmapSaveExtensions - support for loading and saving the bitmap to/from files
  - WriteableBitmapBlitBlockExtensions - support for quick blitting of a full-width section of a bitmap to another bitmap of same width
  - WriteableBitmapCopyExtensions - support creating a copy of a WriteableBitmap
  - WriteableBitmapCropExtensions - support for creating a cropped version of a WriteableBitmap
  - WriteableBitmapDarkenExtension - performs image processing to darken the pixels of the WriteableBitmap.
  - WriteableBitmapFloodFillExtensions - support for flood-filling a region of a WriteableBitmap - either limited by an outline color or by replacing a given color - usually a color at the starting position or colors similar to it
  - WriteableBitmapFromBitmapImageExtension - allows to create a WriteableBitmap from a BitmapImage assuming the BitmapImage is installed with the application.
  - WriteableBitmapGrayscaleExtension - performs image processing to make the pixels of the WriteableBitmap (more) grayscale.
  - WriteableBitmapLightenExtension - performs image processing to lighten the pixels of the WriteableBitmap.

IO helpers
- ScaledImageFile.Get() - Used to retrieve a StorageFile that uses qualifiers in the naming convention.
- StorageFileExtensions.GetSize()/.GetSizeString() - allow to get the size of a file and its string representation (automatically converting from bytes to kB, MB, GB, TB)
- StorageFolderExtensions
  - .ContainsFile() - returns a value that states whether a file with specific name exists in the folder
  - .CreateTempFile() - creates a temporary file
  - .CreateTempFileName() - returns an unused, unique file name for a temporary file
- StringIOExtensions - allows to easily read or write a string from/to file in a single call
- Serialization
  - JsonSerialization - allows to serialize a properly DataContract-annotated object to a JSON string or file or deserialize an existing one.
  - XmlSerialization - allows to serialize a properly DataContract- or XmlSerializer-annotated object to a XML string or file or deserialize an existing one.

Net.WebFile.SaveAsync()- downloads a file from a given URL, automatically figuring out the recommended file name and saving it to a given or default folder

Tools
- BackgroundTimer - a timer class similar to DispatcherTimer in its interface, but somewhat more precise and running on a background thread
- EnumExtensions.GetValues<T>() - allows to get an array of strongly typed values of enum type T
- TryCatchRetry - allows to run a specific Task or Action, catching exceptions and retrying for a specified number of retries, with optional delays in between (mostly a debugging tool or a means of temporary workarounds)

Work in Progress
The libraries are just a set of helper methods and controls that I found useful to fill the gaps in Windows Runtime XAML framework and continues to evolve.

Likely Additions

Cancellation support to AsyncUI extensions and other awaitable methods
AutoComplete control or attached property/behavior
Calendar control (Note - there is currently a version of the Silverlight Toolkit control that I ported to WinRT here, but I keep it separate since I am considering something more touch-friendly for WinRT
ColorPicker control (already in development, but incomplete)
Date/Time/DateTimePicker control
InkCanvas control
MultiScaleImage control for Deep Zoom support - could be based on the WPF implementation from CodeProjet
Pivot control - analogous to a Pivot control on Windows Phone or a TabControl in WPF.
WeatherAppTabControl - a Pivot/TabControl like control that mimics the one in the Weather App.
CropControl - a control for cropping images.
Project and item templates - with or without AlternativePage/Frame, with a recommended AppShell control, settings panels, app bar, mvvm basics etc.
ScatterView, ScatterViewItem - implementations of the ItemsControl classes of the original Microsoft Surface that allow to freely drag the items on the screen.
WatermarkPasswordBox control.
Extended visual debugging and integration support tools such as sample data generation or capture from live runtime data, visual tree debugging, storyboard debugging etc.

Feedback
Please share your experience with the toolkit either in the DISCUSSIONS page or directly on twitter. What do you use? How does it work for you? What are you missing? What would you change? Feedback is crucial and drives further development.

Related Projects

Tim Heuer's and Morten Nielsen's Callisto - contains a host of controls (DateTimePicker, Flyout, LiveTile, Menu, SettingsFlyout), converters, Tilt Effect, OAuth helper, SQLite connection helper, etc.
Joost van Schaik's Win8nl utilities - a helper library for Jupiter, featuring some excellent attached behaviors. Based on WinRT Behaviors and MVVM Light.
Joost van Schaik's WinRT Behaviors - modeled after the original Blend Behaviors - these make creating attached behaviors easier and are configurable with Blend.
Johaan Laanstra's Windows.UI.Interactivity - a port of System.Windows.Interactivity to the Windows Runtime that includes both behaviors and triggers
WinRT XAML Calendar - a version of the Silverlight Toolkit calendar ported to WinRT.
AsyncUI - a separate version of the AsyncUI library with support for WPF, Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 with Async CTP3 (it might not yet have all the features that WinRT XAML Toolkit has in the AsyncUI namespace, but has the most useful ones)
Michiel Post's Q42.WinRT library for data driven Windows 8 C# / XAML WinRT projects
Mahmoud Moussa Windows 8 Toolkit - Charts and More - the original location of the Silverlight Toolkit's chart controls ported to Jupiter that are now also part of this project.
https://xamlcropcontrol.codeplex.com/ - XAML Crop Control

Commercial component libraries
This library gives you some helpful controls and extensions, but it is an open source project developed in free time. If you need controls not available here and otherwise well tested controls - consider the commercial solutions.

Source code checked in, #523a87901e5b84360f4bd28b43ed23c53816ef0e

Filip Skakun — Sun, 19 May 2013 06:21:25 GMT

Version 1.4 Added options to modify some properties of elements in visual tree debugger. Included some popups support in VisualTreeHelperExtensions when getting descendants. Some documentation updates.

New Post: An accordion control would be nice

fgoulet — Fri, 17 May 2013 13:20:51 GMT

Nice, thanks brendan.

Source code checked in, #3947833f80039890d330a5b25011bb9444bfab46

unknown — Tue, 14 May 2013 15:21:05 GMT

Bugfixes

New Post: An accordion control would be nice

brendan — Sun, 12 May 2013 08:38:00 GMT

I ended up porting the accordion from SL toolkit to WinRT (http://github.com/brendankowitz/ZeroProximity.Accordion). I removed the ScrollViewer as adding vertical scrolling needs to be a very conscious decision in winrt apps. Obviously you'd want to style it to look decent, but the behavior of the control itself seems good.

Updated Wiki: Home

xyzzer — Sun, 12 May 2013 04:53:23 GMT

Features

Integrated extensions from the AsyncUI library - a set of extension methods for UI classes that add support for async/await to wait for events such as:
- Wait for a BitmapImage to load
- Wait for a Button or one of a list of buttons to be clicked
- Wait for a FrameworkElement to load, unload or become non-zero-sized
- Wait for all images in a FrameworkElement's visual tree to load
- Wait for a MediaElement to change state - eg. to start or finish playback
- Wait for a Selector (e.g. ListBox) to change selected item
- Wait for a Storyboard to complete
- Wait for a VisualState transition to complete
- Wait for a WebView to complete navigation
- Wait for a WriteableBitmap to load (uses polling due to lack of an event)

Controls
- AlternativeFrame, AlternativePage - support asynchronous page transitions and preloading pages so when navigation is initiated - all content might already be loaded. Includes 4 built-in transitions: dissolve, flip, push, wipe. You can add new ones yourself.
- AnimatingContainer - a container control that will animate its contents rotating or zooming in/out, eg. to make them feel more alive.
- CameraCaptureControl - supports displaying camera preview, capturing photos and videos, cycling between existing video capture devices, setting preference to Front/Back panel camera, etc.
- CascadingTextBlock - a TextBlock replacement that animates the individual letters in a cascade - fading in while falling down into position, then optionally fading out while falling down from the standard position.
- Chart - Silverlight Toolkit's Chart control ported by Mahmoud Moussa (ZeeMoussa on CodePlex) and merged from his Windows 8 Toolkit - Charts and More project. Supports pie charts, bar charts, scatter charts, etc.
- CountdownControl - a movie-style control that animates a ring-slice shape while counting down seconds - e.g. to take a picture with a camera after a given number of seconds (supports async/await).
- CustomAppBar - a custom implementation of the AppBar that automatically handles the three gestures to switch IsOpen (WinKey+Z, Right-Click, EdgeGesture), adds a CanOpen property, so you can prevent it from opening and opens/hides with a sliding animation when placed anywhere in the app, so you can layer content on top of it. Also features CanDismiss property to force the app bar to stay open in some situations, CanOpenInSnappedView which allows to block the app bar from showing up when the app is in the snapped view.
- CustomGridSplitter - a custom implementation of a GridSplitter as a templated control.
- DelayedLoadControl - given a content/DataTemplate - loads the contents after a given amount of time - e.g. to allow for staged loading of contents on screen.
- ImageButton - a custom Button control that takes one to three images to be used to represent different states of the button (normal/hover/pressed/disabled) as well as ways for the button to render all 4 states with just one or two images.
- ImageToggleButton - custom ToggleButton control, that like ImageButton - helps create buttons based on button state images using from 1 to 8 different state images and generating other state images with some simple image processing.
- InputDialog - a custom/templated dialog control that takes text input.
- ListItemButton - a simple button control with Click event and Command property to be used inside of list controls (the standard button steals pointer capture from the List/Grid~Items so they can't be selected.
- NumericUpDown - allows to display and manipulate a number using text input, +/- buttons or Blend-like swipe-manipulations
- PieSlice - a pie slice path/shape given StartAngle, EndAngle and Radius.
- RingSlice - a pie slice path/shape given StartAngle, EndAngle, Radius and InnerRadius.
- WatermarkTextBox - TextBox control with a watermark. Set WatermarkText to change the watermark prompt, change WatermarkStyle to change the style of the watermark TextBlock.
- WebBrowser - a templated control with a WebView + address bar, title bar, backstack navigation, favicon. work in progress (visual states are a bit messed up), but might be helpful as a starting point
- WrapPanel (ported from Silverlight Toolkit) - used for layout of child items in wrapping rows or columns - similar to the way text wraps on a page. Different than VariableSizedWrapGrid since it supports items of varying size and auto-sized rows or columns, but it is not a grid and so it does not explicitly support items spanning multiple cells without the use of negative margins.

Controls.Extensions
- AnimationHelper - two attached properties - Storyboard and IsPlaying. Allows to easily control Storyboard playback from a view model (note limitation - a single storyboard per control).
- AppBarExtensions.HideWhenSnapped - allows to make the AppBar automatically hide when the app goes to the snapped view.
- ContentControlExtensions.FadeTransitioningContentTemplate - allows to change content template with a fade out/fade in transition.
- ControlExtensions.Cursor - enables setting a mouse cursor to show when hovering over a control.
- FrameworkElementExtensions.ClipToBounds - automatically updates the Clip property to clip the contents of the element to its bounds.
- ImageExtensions.FadeInOnLoaded/.Source - allows to specify an image source such that the image fades in smoothly when the image source is loaded.
- ListBoxExtensions./ListViewExtensions
  - BindableSelection - allows a two-way binding of the SelectedItems collection on the Selector/list controls.
  - ItemToBringIntoView - allows to control which item should be visible through a view model binding without changing the selected item itself.
- RichTextBlockExtensions
  - PlainText - attached property that allows to easily single-way-bind plain text to a RichTextBlock (not really that useful other than for visualizing RichTextBlock styles in the sample app provided).
  - LinkedHtmlFragment - attached property that allows to easily single-way-bind plain text with HTML links (anchor tags) to a RichTextBlock to automatically generate links. Extension methods like SetLinkedHtmlFragment() and AppendLink() are also available.
- ScrollViewerExtensions.ScrollToHorizontalOffsetWithAnimation(), .ScrollToVerticalOffsetWithAnimation() - provide a way to scroll a ScrollViewer to specified offset with an animation.
- TextBlockExtensions/GetCharacterRect() - an extension method that returns a rectangle that holds a character at a given index in the TextBlock.
- TextBoxValidationExtensions - extensions that allow to specify the Format of the requested Text input as well as brushes to use to highlight a TextBox with valid or invalid Text.
- ViewboxExtensions.GetChildScaleX()/GetChildScaleY() - return the effective scale of the Viewbox Child.
- VisualTreeHelperExtensions - provides a set of extension methods that enumerate visual tree ascendants/descendants of a given control - making it easy to do these operations with LINQ as well as simple ways to list controls of a given type or find the first control of a given type searching up or down the visual tree.
- WebViewExtensions - extensions to get currently loaded page address, title, favicon, head tag's inner HTML.

Converters.
- BindingDebugConverter - helps debug bindings by allowing to trace or break whenever a binding gets updated.
- BooleanToDataTemplateConverter - given two DataTemplates (TrueTemplate and FalseTemplate) - converts the input value to the given template. A different take on DataTemplateSelector.
- BooleanToVisibilityConverter - the mother of all converters
- ColorToBrushConverter - converts a Color to a Brush
- DoubleToIntConverter
- NullableBoolToBoolConverter
- NullableBoolToVisibilityConverter
- SecondsToTimeSpanStringConverter - converts the number of seconds (a double type) to a TimeSpan - useful for configuring some animations

Debugging helpers
- VisualTreeDebugger - provides a trace of the visual tree structure when a control loads, its layout updates or it gets tapped as well as allowing the application to break in the debugger if one of these events occurs
- Debug/DebugConsole/DebugConsoleOverlay/DC.Trace() - enables tracing and displaying traced information right in the application on a collapsible panel

Imaging Extensions
- BitmapImageLoadExtensions - extensions to simplify loading BitmapImages based on StorageFile or file name
- ColorExtensions - Conversions between pixels and pixel buffer types of byte, int and Color
- IBufferExtensions - Adds a GetPixels() extension method to the PixelBuffer property of a WriteableBitmap that reads in the buffer to a byte array and exposes an indexer compatible to the one of the Pixels property in Silverlight's WriteableBitmap
- WriteableBitmap~ - a set of extension methods for a WriteableBitmap
  - WriteableBitmapSaveExtensions - support for loading and saving the bitmap to/from files
  - WriteableBitmapBlitBlockExtensions - support for quick blitting of a full-width section of a bitmap to another bitmap of same width
  - WriteableBitmapCopyExtensions - support creating a copy of a WriteableBitmap
  - WriteableBitmapCropExtensions - support for creating a cropped version of a WriteableBitmap
  - WriteableBitmapDarkenExtension - performs image processing to darken the pixels of the WriteableBitmap.
  - WriteableBitmapFloodFillExtensions - support for flood-filling a region of a WriteableBitmap - either limited by an outline color or by replacing a given color - usually a color at the starting position or colors similar to it
  - WriteableBitmapFromBitmapImageExtension - allows to create a WriteableBitmap from a BitmapImage assuming the BitmapImage is installed with the application.
  - WriteableBitmapGrayscaleExtension - performs image processing to make the pixels of the WriteableBitmap (more) grayscale.
  - WriteableBitmapLightenExtension - performs image processing to lighten the pixels of the WriteableBitmap.

IO helpers
- ScaledImageFile.Get() - Used to retrieve a StorageFile that uses qualifiers in the naming convention.
- StorageFileExtensions.GetSize()/.GetSizeString() - allow to get the size of a file and its string representation (automatically converting from bytes to kB, MB, GB, TB)
- StorageFolderExtensions
  - .ContainsFile() - returns a value that states whether a file with specific name exists in the folder
  - .CreateTempFile() - creates a temporary file
  - .CreateTempFileName() - returns an unused, unique file name for a temporary file
- StringIOExtensions - allows to easily read or write a string from/to file in a single call
- Serialization
  - JsonSerialization - allows to serialize a properly DataContract-annotated object to a JSON string or file or deserialize an existing one.
  - XmlSerialization - allows to serialize a properly DataContract- or XmlSerializer-annotated object to a XML string or file or deserialize an existing one.

Net.WebFile.SaveAsync()- downloads a file from a given URL, automatically figuring out the recommended file name and saving it to a given or default folder

Tools
- BackgroundTimer - a timer class similar to DispatcherTimer in its interface, but somewhat more precise and running on a background thread
- EnumExtensions.GetValues<T>() - allows to get an array of strongly typed values of enum type T
- TryCatchRetry - allows to run a specific Task or Action, catching exceptions and retrying for a specified number of retries, with optional delays in between (mostly a debugging tool or a means of temporary workarounds)

Work in Progress
The libraries are just a set of helper methods and controls that I found useful to fill the gaps in Windows Runtime XAML framework and continues to evolve.

Likely Additions

Cancellation support to AsyncUI extensions and other awaitable methods
AutoComplete control or attached property/behavior
Calendar control (Note - there is currently a version of the Silverlight Toolkit control that I ported to WinRT here, but I keep it separate since I am considering something more touch-friendly for WinRT
ColorPicker control (already in development, but incomplete)
Date/Time/DateTimePicker control
InkCanvas control
MultiScaleImage control for Deep Zoom support - could be based on the WPF implementation from CodeProjet
Pivot control - analogous to a Pivot control on Windows Phone or a TabControl in WPF.
WeatherAppTabControl - a Pivot/TabControl like control that mimics the one in the Weather App.
CropControl - a control for cropping images.
Project and item templates - with or without AlternativePage/Frame, with a recommended AppShell control, settings panels, app bar, mvvm basics etc.
ScatterView, ScatterViewItem - implementations of the ItemsControl classes of the original Microsoft Surface that allow to freely drag the items on the screen.
WatermarkPasswordBox control.
Extended visual debugging and integration support tools such as sample data generation or capture from live runtime data, visual tree debugging, storyboard debugging etc.

Tim Heuer's and Morten Nielsen's Callisto - contains a host of controls (DateTimePicker, Flyout, LiveTile, Menu, SettingsFlyout), converters, Tilt Effect, OAuth helper, SQLite connection helper, etc.
Joost van Schaik's Win8nl utilities - a helper library for Jupiter, featuring some excellent attached behaviors. Based on WinRT Behaviors and MVVM Light.
Joost van Schaik's WinRT Behaviors - modeled after the original Blend Behaviors - these make creating attached behaviors easier and are configurable with Blend.
Johaan Laanstra's Windows.UI.Interactivity - a port of System.Windows.Interactivity to the Windows Runtime that includes both behaviors and triggers
WinRT XAML Calendar - a version of the Silverlight Toolkit calendar ported to WinRT.
AsyncUI - a separate version of the AsyncUI library with support for WPF, Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 with Async CTP3 (it might not yet have all the features that WinRT XAML Toolkit has in the AsyncUI namespace, but has the most useful ones)
Michiel Post's Q42.WinRT library for data driven Windows 8 C# / XAML WinRT projects
Mahmoud Moussa Windows 8 Toolkit - Charts and More - the original location of the Silverlight Toolkit's chart controls ported to Jupiter that are now also part of this project.
https://xamlcropcontrol.codeplex.com/ - XAML Crop Control

Source code checked in, #8d51b788665c2063f2abae828277724a4b322daa

Filip Skakun — Sat, 11 May 2013 06:19:35 GMT

Fixed a bug in field validation extensions caused by no TextChanged event getting raised when a TextBox.Text is changed before the TextBox loads. Preemptively applied same fix to PasswordBox validation without verifying.

New Post: Size of CountdownControl

star8909 — Fri, 03 May 2013 15:36:31 GMT

Hi firstable I want to say thank youuu for this toolkit which is very useful and great for every Windows RT developpers.

My question is, is it possible to change the size of countdown control included in this xaml toolkit?

I tried to modify the height and the width directly on XAML control code but it seems not working.

Thank you.

Source code checked in, #8ed4b738d64c35c85396f431ae20dd36e651d562

Filip Skakun — Thu, 02 May 2013 15:38:44 GMT

Version 1.3.8.0. Added WatermarkPasswordBox.

New Post: Working example for WriteableBitmap extensions, grayscale?

ehuna — Wed, 01 May 2013 05:30:57 GMT

In the release notes, I see:

WriteableBitmap extensions - darken, grayscale

I downloaded the solution and ran "WinRTXamlToolkit.Sample" to see if I could figure out how to use the WriteableBitmapRenderExtensions(). Unfortantely, when I try to use WriteableBitmapRenderTestPage.xaml, the app crashes on line 37 of the code-behind:

            wb = await WriteableBitmapRenderExtensions.Render(this.source);

With the exception:

System.NotSupportedException was unhandled by user code
  HResult=-2146233067
  Message=Unable to expand length of this stream beyond its capacity.
  Source=mscorlib
  StackTrace:
       at System.IO.UnmanagedMemoryStream.Write(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 count)
       at WinRTXamlToolkit.Composition.CompositionEngine.<RenderToWriteableBitmap>d__0.MoveNext() in d:\ehunatfs\ehuna2\Nds\Sandbox\WinRTXamlToolkit\WinRTXamlToolkit.Composition\CompositionEngine.cs:line 131
    --- End of stack trace from previous location where exception was thrown ---
       at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.ThrowForNonSuccess(Task task)
       at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.HandleNonSuccessAndDebuggerNotification(Task task)
       at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter`1.GetResult()
       at WinRTXamlToolkit.Composition.WriteableBitmapRenderExtensions.<Render>d__0.MoveNext() in d:\ehunatfs\ehuna2\Nds\Sandbox\WinRTXamlToolkit\WinRTXamlToolkit.Composition\WriteableBitmapRenderExtensions.cs:line 31
    --- End of stack trace from previous location where exception was thrown ---
       at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.ThrowForNonSuccess(Task task)
       at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.HandleNonSuccessAndDebuggerNotification(Task task)
       at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter`1.GetResult()
       at WinRTXamlToolkit.Sample.Views.WriteableBitmapRenderTestPage.<RunTest>d__0.MoveNext() in d:\ehunatfs\ehuna2\Nds\Sandbox\WinRTXamlToolkit\WinRTXamlToolkit.Sample\Views\Imaging\WriteableBitmapRenderTestPage.xaml.cs:line 37
  InnerException:

Does anyone have an example on how to transform a Bitmap to grayscale?

Source code checked in, #f960553ce013d1d712496bde484003dca1b88e51

Filip Skakun — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 07:09:42 GMT

Version 1.3.7.5

Source code checked in, #8253a5510d3cf6ccacf7f907e98497f028a69047

Filip Skakun — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 07:08:35 GMT

Visual Tree debugger - added read-only property filter (hiding read-only properties by default) and fixed where the default property filter is set (it used to be per dependency object - not it is for visual tree view model).

Source code checked in, #d69c5f99732ff7fd770ea4c43041a1eba3884c19

Filip Skakun — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 15:57:35 GMT

Version 1.3.7.4 Disabled element previews in the visual tree debugger to remove the heavy dependencies on SharpDX.

Source code checked in, #fbebe09672775430e2ba984ae78c3b0067858c07

Filip Skakun — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 15:31:32 GMT

Version 1.3.7.3. Visual Tree debugger test page and selection improvements. Made TreeView control do an animated scroll to the newly selected position. Added ScrollViewerExtensions to the AwaitableUI namespace to wait for scroll requests to complete.

Source code checked in, #f203cca0d007dde523953fa37dacc68eeabc03f3

Filip Skakun — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 17:00:29 GMT

Adding an item preview tab to the visual tree debugger

Source code checked in, #70747cf4c64f3043cbf30d83865d74bb7d468a45

Filip Skakun — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 06:07:54 GMT

Minor updates to visual tree debugger. Updated most of missing xml docs.

New Post: LineSeries Y axis values

Thraeyll — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 08:52:36 GMT

Hi!

I use the charts of the toolkit and it works really great but i've just run into a problem.
The independent (Y) axis of my LineSeries has a lot of values so those are fading each other. Is it possible to don't show all the values on the axis but for example every 5th of them?
I tried to modify the source code but sadly I was not able to reach my goal.

Thanks!

Source code checked in, #79490b5ac4e3bb8ef75dcaff943bda7db7361257

Filip Skakun — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 16:58:44 GMT

v. 1.3.7.1 Visual tree view visualization improved with basic refresh functionality and element highlight+selection with Ctrl+Shift.