Visual Style Builder for ASP.NET AJAX: A Heavy Update

Too much stuff! Must click little link: to the Style Builder!

What's new?

• RadMenu, RadComboBox and RadInput get their share of styling goodness
• updated to the new-and-shiny 2009.Q2 release (featuring the real mode of RadColorPicker)
• the sought-after "base color" in Colorization is available

I hope that you will like the UI. We revised it a few times before settling for this. The position of the "Apply" button was way off into nowhere (and, honestly speaking, it still is in the advanced edit).

A note about colorization

While the 'colorize' mode is indeed more useful (and probably sufficient in most scenarios), the old 'shift colors' algorithm has its charm, too. Two things thou shalt consider:

1. You can create grayscale versions of every skin. Just slide the saturation down to -100 (percent). This is extremely useful if you want to test your design. Caution: once you go grayscale, you never come back!
2. The "Hue" slider preserves the offset between colors - that is, newly generated colors relate to each other in the same way as the initial ones. This makes sense if you want to generate themes that are harmonic according to color theory. I guess I'll be posting more on this topic in the future...

What's up with the color pickers?

Now that's what I call a color picker! No more "where's my favorite shade of pink?" - it's all included. And it's part of the Q2 release, so if you want it, you can have it. In the VSB, only two palettes are used - HSV and Web palette, yet there are two more - HSB and RGB sliders.

What's next?

You decide! I'd love to hear your feedback on the new stuff and what you want to see in the future. Adjusting the contrast is first on the list, along with the support of all RadControls. Then, we'll go beta :-)