ColorPicker.NET Update #2

  • Article

I’ve uploaded the most recent binaries for ColorPicker.NET. A lot of changes have been made to the codebase to improve performance as well as the overall experience. Some noticeable changes are:

  1. You can copy, enter and paste hex values.
  2. You can change the color space and hex values with the keyboard by hitting the up/down arrow when the textbox has focus. Hold down the shift button to increase/decrease the value by 10. This is one area where this application outperforms the color picker in Photoshop (at least in v.6.0). Try doing the same thing in Photoshop. You’ll see a whole bunch of flickering.
  3. When dragging the currently selected color to the color swatch panel, a dialog pops up asking you to provide a description for the color. This is optional. If you don’t want to provide a description, just hit the Ok button.
  4. Duplicates are blocked. You’ll see an error message if you try to drop a color that already exists on the color swatch panel.
  5. Custom swatches are written to and loaded from disk.

Things that I still need to do include the following:

  1. Minimize to system tray functionality.

  2. Put in an icon (Thanks, Scott).

  3. Serialize the application state to disk when the application closes.

  4. Create an options dialog that allows users to configure the application settings (display default colors in the color swatch, which component is to be selected by default on startup, etc).

  5. Fix bugs with dual monitor configuration (Thanks, Ken).

  6. Color swatch management (delete, rename, etc).

  7. Any other issues that you guys report.

     

The source code will be released on the Smart Client Developer Center sometime in the next week or so along with an article that provides an in depth look at how I implemented some of the components that you see in the application. As of right now, I will be taking a look at the functionality behind the color slider, color field and the interaction between the currently selected color and the color swatch panel. If there is anything in particular pertaining to the application that you’d like to read about, now is the time to let me know.

 

I’m really excited about what I’ve accomplished thus far. It’s going to be a killer application once I’m done. Please continue to provide feedback. It will do nothing less than make this a better tool for all of us.