Beginning Web Development, Silverlight, and ASP.NET AJAX

388
CHAPTER 16 ■ PROGRAMMING SILVERLIGHT WITH XAML AND JAVASCRIPT
Bevel: This shaves the edges off the join, thus smoothing it.
Miter: This keeps the default edging.
Round: This rounds off the edges of the join.
Using Visual Elements in XAML
Earlier, you saw several of the common visual elements that are used in XAML, including
Canvas.Top and Canvas.Left. There are a number of other properties that many XAML elements
have in common. In this section, you’ll take a look at these, and from there you’ll
be able to understand the subsequent sections a little better!
Dimension and Position Properties
You’ll typically use the Height and Width properties to set the dimensions of an item.
These take a double value—so, for example, to create a 50✕100 rectangle, you define its
XAML as follows:
The properties for setting the location of an item are Canvas.Top and Canvas.Left.
These have a special syntax, called attached properties, as they are ultimately related to
the parent element. So, to set the same rectangle to appear 50 pixels from the left and 50
pixels down from the top of its container, you would use this XAML:
Opacity
Most shapes allow their alpha channels to be set. This can be done with the alpha channel
on a shape’s fill brush (with the exception of the VideoBrush). In addition, most
elements allow you to use the Opacity property, which is a normalized double with 0 representing
invisible, 1 representing visible, and everything in between representing a
degree of opacity relative to the specified value.
Cursor Behavior
To provide good feedback to your users, it is often necessary to change the mouse cursor
to indicate the type of action that is appropriate. XAML elements expose a Cursor property
that allows you to set the following values: