Rick Barraza

Friday November 02, 2007

Flash to Silverlight Project 01: Cynergy Matrix with Editor

Ok, so the first and most basic thing I want to know as an interactive designer is how to create something on the screen and power it with code. So what better way to jump into Silverlight than by duplicating a typical ActionScript project and seeing where the metaphors stand and where they fall. The dots are controls (Silverlight version of MovieClips) that are added on the mouseMove and have a dynamic storyboard attached at creation to move them into the position. Opening the grid editor lets you customize your own string of up to 10 characters and stores the data in a collection of bitkeys per character. Why bitkeys? I'm just a sucker for bitshifting and wanted to see how to do it in C#, being still relatively fresh to .NET 3.0.

Unlike my serious Flex and .NET developer friends, I would say my traditional approach to experience coding is more like my approach to design; I start bold and sloppy and refine with iterations. Doing it with functions and math is pretty much the same thing as doing it with pixels and layout if the language is forgiving enough. C# is much more... exacting than ActionScript 1.0 was, so I still have to figure out how to keep reckless creativity compliant with Silverlight's more rigid code environment.

Silverlight Application Below
UPDATED FOR SILVERLIGHT 2.0 BETA
Click to activate object.



Instructions: Move the mouse to spell out messages with the dots you drop. Open the Grid Editor to build your own message. You can customize a message up to 10 characters long. Build your characters from scratch or use the alphabet templates supplied.