"hard work, persistence & passion"

I have used images for the panoramic control to good effect in phone applications in the past but one issue I have always had to manage is ensuring that the image works equally well  with both the light and dark themes.  With skill it is sometimes possible to use a single opaque image to good effect.  It is also possible to check which theme is in operation on start-up and set the image programmatically accordingly (not covered by this post)

When working on my latest ‘App Builder’ inspired App ‘Fishing Tips’ I suddenly had the thought of using a semi-transparent background image (instead of a ‘compromised’ opaque image).  I commonly use “Paint.NET” for any image related work and so took a little time out to search for a suitable plug-in that might help me to test out my idea.

I found a suitable plug in here and proceeded to test out my theory:

Here are the results:

Applying the effect in Paint.NET

^{Before and after transparency application.}

^{Within the App using Light and Dark themes.}

As you can see the same image works equally well with either theme selected
(Note to self: it looks like some of those images need re-aligning?)

BTW The XAML used for the Panoramic Background image is as follows:

Someone also pointed out that the same result can be achieved with a completely opaque background image by setting it’s opacity to 0.25 – which I must admit gave me a ‘slap  forehead’ moment.

~ by Ian on February 13, 2013.

Posted in Tip, Windows Phone, Windows Phone 7.8, Windows Phone 8