Design effects in WPF (tricks to enhance app's appearance)

c# wpf wpf-controls
user101375 picture user101375 · Jun 29, 2009 · Viewed 20.7k times · Source

I have developed an application that must be presented on exhibition as advertising. I want it to look more sexy! What tricks do you know that enhance the appearance of your applications?

What are the best design effects the developer can use for its application? I am speaking about: glowing, shadows, maybe forms of buttons, beautiful animation of splash screens and so on.

What is YOUR favourite effect?

Answer

hejja picture hejja · Jun 29, 2009

If you have no feeling for what looks good, then don't try magic tricks like glowing shadows or sparky gradients, it will only look like some awkward app from the late 90s. Like Chris said, effects can ruin an application as quickly as it can make one.

There is no silver bullet for good design, the best tip for someone totally lost is: Less is more. Especially when it comes to colors, avoid using many different colors.

Look on other good looking apps (Photoshop CS4, Adobe Reader 9, OSX Preview, etc etc) they are actually really clean.

If you really want to use some wpf-powers an easy trick is opacity transitions, just keep all animations short (max 0.2 seconds). And for moving animations make sure to use acceleration and deceleration, otherwise the animation will look really weird.

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