Solving development problems  |  About this blog

Got a new Android phone Samsung Galaxy S i9000 and tried to connect it with a PC. Galaxy S is a good phone, but as good as it is, the Samsung Kies software is bad.
There are problems when installing Kies on Windows 7 (64-bit version) and during installation we got a blank screen like this:

As you can see during installation we got white modal screen, but Windows 7 helped as because in Taskbar it shows active window preview so we somehow try to guess where to click with mouse button.
We tried to install it 5 times and we finally managed – the trick is to quickly click on installation screens buttons “Continue”, check “I Agree..” because you have less than a half second to do this and then you can watch in your Taskbar zoom what is really happening in this white screen.
Finally, here it is installed

We spent quite some time working on a Silverlight deep zoom application. Like in other projects, a problem appears sooner or later. This time with the WriteableBitmap that couldn’t take screenshot of a basic shape.

//Simple ellipse (green circle)
Ellipse element = new Ellipse()
{
	Width = 50,
	Height = 50,
	Fill = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Green)
};

//WriteableBitmap current = new WriteableBitmap(50, 50);
//current.Render(element, new MatrixTransform()); //DOES NOT WORK!!! - renders blank transparent image

//But with the constructor works fine
WriteableBitmap bitmap = new WriteableBitmap(element, new MatrixTransform());

//Ellipse captured as raster image painted on a panel's background
Grid grid = new Grid()
{
	Width = 50,
	Height = 50,
	Background = new ImageBrush() { ImageSource = bitmap }
};

Summary for the Render() method says: “Renders an element within the bitmap.”
Render() method didn’t output required result but using constructor instead of the method did do the job. Input parameters were the same.

Maybe Render() method do something else, maybe it is a problem with Vista 64-bit…

Anyway, WriteableBitmap is very useful in Silverlight 3, luckily it works.

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