FBJS Animation

The Facebook dev team yesterday released a JavaScript animation library under a modified BSD license. The JavaScript library works in Canvas pages and Profile boxes, and also outside of Facebook! That means you can grab a copy of the library and, since it's been decoupled from the FBJS core, you can use it to add animations to your own webpages.

From the dev wiki, it looks simple enough to use, with FBJS's jQuery-style chainability really shining through when applied to the ordering of animation and effects sequences. The library also allows advanced techniques like checkpoints with callbacks and custom easing.

Cool. I'm definitely gonna' have to find some time to check out the library.

Related posts:
AppJet your Facebook application
Behind the scenes with Facebook Beacon's JavaScript
No JavaScript for Facebook mobile platform
AJAX wrapper for FBJS
Lessons in FBJS
How I created a Facebook application with FBJS
Facebook releases FBJS

Use free vectors in your Silverlight development

Inkscape will soon be supporting exports to XAML, which means we'll be able to use the open source multi-platform vector designer for Silverlight-related development.

Right now, there are only two real ways to do any serious design in XAML:

1. Buy Expression Blend and Expression Design ($599)


2. Buy Adobe Illustrator ($599) and use the XAML export plugin

Now that Inkscape is picking up XAML export, there's a third way that doesn't start with any buying.

Well, there also existed a fourth way that didn't require any buying, which was a hack involving manual extractions from an XPS file, created from the target SVG in a roundabout manner via Inkscape and Adobe PDF. But, why bother with this limiting and tedious method, if you've got built-in XAML export (already available in the nightly builds)?

Build-in XAML export in Inkscape means that, for design-challenged programmers (like yours truly), the many free vector resources found online are now finally available for us to use in our Silverlight development. To use these free resources, all we need to do is download and open the EPS or SVG files in Inkscape, and then exporting them to XAML to plug right into our Silverlight webpage elements and/or user controls. For free vector graphics, start with these: Vecteezy, FreeVectors.net, FreeVectors.com, and Vectorlove. Just Google for more.

Other XAML tools mentioned here in this blog:
Kaxaml
Silverlight Spy

Mapping Resources: Google Maps .NET Control, GeoRSS with WCF

Here are two mapping links that've made their way to my news aggregator since the last resouces post, summarized here for your convenience:

• Chris Newman talks about the free version of Google Map .NET Control which lets you add a map control with lines/markers to your ASP.NET webpage. It's a simple download and dll-to-bin-drop away from coding your first map server control in C# and ASP.NET:

  
<reimers:googlemap id="GoogleMap1" runat="server" width="349" height="354" onmarkerclick="GoogleMap1_MarkerClick" />

  
  As you'll notice, web event-handling is standard ASP.NET. The licensed and more complete version of the server control, is available for download and works free on localhost URLs so you can download that and try it as well.


• Eugenio Pace blogged about creating a GeoRSS with WCF Syndication very easily, which he then wrangled into Virtual Earth for a mashup just to show it works. You could take this, couple it with lessons learned from this other article about creating RESTful Web Services with WCF, and just as easily create RESTful GeoRSS services. Cool, no?

Also, an upbeat update last month on the state of online maps, mapping services and features from Channel 8.

Previously on this blog:
Mapping Resources: Mapstraction, Geocommons, GeoCoder.us with C#
Easily get maps on Facebook with Popfly
Open source mapping with OpenLayers and OpenStreetMap
Drawing a Virtual Earth map with Yahoo! Pipes data

Kaxaml (Silverlight tool, sorta)

My first post on this blog when I started it last year was XAML inspection with Silverlight Spy. I think it's apt (in some strange way, for sure) that I'd kick-start this year's blogging with another post about working with XAML.

Silverlight Spy has since released some updates, but the big news for this post is, yesterday, Robby Ingebretsen released version 1.0 of his hobby-with-a-domain-name split-view XAML editor Kaxaml. Kaxaml was written with WPF, and has tabs and intellisense. It doesn't yet support Silverlight XAML namespaces right out of the box just yet, although this shouldn't take Robby much effort to do for an update in the near future, and he's said as much on his website. To work with Silverlight in Kaxaml, you should need to do no more than change the Silverlight XAML namespace to the corresponding WPF namespace.

Best of all, it's free (and it looks like Robby'll share the code soon too)!