[...]... XAML with C# or VB makes for a powerful platform for user interface design and development There is always something new and interesting you can do In Windows 8, we’ve expanded XAML so you can use your skills (and reuse your markup) in C++ The time you spend working in XAML is time well spent It’s a skill you can carry forward with confidence I’m proud to work with Walt because of his passion for XAML, ... I’ll wager you’ve heard about pixel shaders In fact, you may be using some of these effects in your application already WPF introduced the DropShadowEffect and BlurEffect in NET 3.5 SP1 and both of these classes take advantage of pixel shaders Silverlight added pixel shaders in Silverlight 3 The Windows Phone team disappointed developers by dropping support for shaders before the final release of their... version Cg and HLSL have virtually identical syntax; they are branded differently for each company Both languages compile shaders for DirectX Cg has the additional benefit of compiling shaders for the OpenGL framework The Open Graphics Library, a.k.a OpenGL, is an open source, crossplatform 2D/3D graphics API These higher level languages are based on the C language (in fact the name Cg stands for C for Graphics)... available It took another couple years for Microsoft to add shaders to the mix Pixel shaders appeared in NET 3.5 in 2007 and now the process looks like this (Figure 1-5) XAML and Shaders | 7 Figure 1-5 WPF 3.5 adds pixel shaders to the render process Notice how the end of this pipeline is identical to the 3D model pipeline cited earlier As you can see, the input data for a pixel shader is the output from... (UI) design and information visualization cry out for shader use Because shaders run at the kernel level of the GPU, they are automatically parallelized by the GPU hardware and are extremely fast at manipulating graphic output Typically, the GPU can process shaders several orders of magnitude faster than if the shader code is run on a CPU Why Should XAML Developers Learn HLSL? If you are an XAML developer,... require permission Incorporating a significant amount of example code from this book into your product’s documentation does require permission We appreciate, but do not require, attribution An attribution usually includes the title, author, publisher, and ISBN For example: HLSL and Pixel Shaders for XAML Developers by Walt Ritscher (O’Reilly) Copyright 2011 Walt Ritscher, 978-1-449-31984-7.” If you feel... and so chipmakers added new features by retooling the chips and throwing hardware at the problem At some point, Microsoft decided this was solvable with software and devised an assembly language approach to address the problem This worked and made custom shaders possible, but required developers who could work in assembly language Assembly language is notoriously complex and hard to read For HLSL and. .. I’ve known Walt for a number of years through our joint work in the XAML community, both before and after I joined Microsoft His passion around XAML and NET, as well as his knowledge of shaders, design, and graphics uniquely qualifies him to write a book like this I knew what to expect when I read the early copy, and I wasn’t disappointed I mean, this is the guy who wrote Shazzam! Oh, and naming a product... to read and understand than the assembly language version Understanding the Graphics Pipeline HLSL is the shader programming language for Direct3D, which is a part of Microsoft’s DirectX API Appendix A contains a detailed account of Direct3D and the graphicsprogramming pipeline What follows is a simplified account of the important parts of the shader workflow To understand pixel shaders in the XAML world... developers who specialize in mastering this arcane craft The reason is clear: it takes a different mindset to understand shaders and some developers are better suited to the skills needed to write successful effects As a result, I started designing tools and tutorials to simplify the shader learning process for XAML developers I didn’t know it at the time, but that road was to lead me to O’Reilly and . alt="" HLSL and Pixel Shaders for XAML Developers Walt Ritscher Beijing • Cambridge • Farnham • Köln • Sebastopol • Tokyo HLSL and Pixel Shaders for XAML Developers by. details. Nutshell Handbook, the Nutshell Handbook logo, and the O’Reilly logo are registered trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc. HLSL and Pixel Shaders for XAML Developers,