Overview
This Wrox Blox shows you how to add graphics to Visual Basic 2008 applications by explaining fundamental graphics techniques such as: drawing shapes with different colors and line styles; filling areas with colors, gradients, and patterns; drawing text that is properly aligned, sized, and clipped exactly where you want it; manipulating images and saving results in bitmap, JPEG, and other types of files. Also covered are instructions for how to greatly increase your graphics capabilities using transformations, which allow you to move, stretch, or rotate graphics. They also let you work in coordinate systems that make sense for your application. The author also describes techniques for using the above in printouts, describing the sequence of events that produce a printout and show how to generate and preview printouts, with examples which show how to wrap long chunks of text across multiple pages, if necessary.
In addition, you will learn about two powerful new graphic tools that were introduced with .NET Framework 3.0: WPF graphics and FlowDocuments. XAML graphic commands allow a WPF application to draw and fill the same kinds of shapes that a program can draw by using graphics objects.
Finally, a discussion on the FlowDocument object shows you how to define items that should be flowed across multiple pages as space permits. This lets you display text, graphics, controls, and other items that automatically flow across page breaks. FlowDocument viewers make displaying these documents easy for you, and simplifies the user's reading of the documents.
This Wrox Blox also contains 35 example programs written in Visual Basic 2008, although most of the code works in previous versions of Visual Basic .NET as well. The most notable exceptions are WPF graphics and FlowDocuments, both of which require WPF provided in .NET Framework 3.0 and later.
Table of Contents
Section 1: Using Graphics, Pens, and Brushes
Getting a Graphics Object
Using a Graphics Object
Creating Pens
Creating Brushes
Section 2: Using Advanced Pens and Brushes
Custom Dash Patterns
Longitudinal Stripes
Custom End Caps
Linear Gradient Brushes
Path Gradient Brushes
Section 3: Drawing Text
Drawing Simple Text
Using Layout Rectangles
Section 4: Manipulating Images
Creating and Loading Bitmaps
Manipulating Bitmaps
Saving Image Files
Section 5: Using Transformations
Basic Transformations
World Coordinate Mapping
Section 6: Printing
Using PrintPage
Using Other Event Handlers
Printing Transformations
Section 7: Using WPF Graphics
Decorative Controls
Shape Controls
Brushes
ImageBrush
Section 8: Building FlowDocuments
BlockUIContainer
List
Paragraph
Section
Table