Pro Silverlight 5 in VB

The Last Word

In this chapter, you delved deeper into Silverlight's 2-D drawing model. This is important, because understanding the plumbing behind 2-D graphics makes it far easier for you to manipulate them.

For example, you can alter a standard 2-D graphic by modifying the brushes used to paint various shapes, altering the opacity, and using pixel shader effects. For still more impressive results, you can combine these techniques with Silverlight's animation features. For example, it's easy to fade a layer of shapes into existence using DrawingGroup.Opacity, or create a swirling dissolve effect by animating a custom pixel shader. You'll see examples of techniques like these in the next chapter.

At the same time, you also learned about lower-level ...