Microsoft just released Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate (RC) & is now available for MSDN Subscribers. It will be available publicly by this Wednesday, 10th February 2010. If you are a MSDN Subscriber, you can download it from MSDN site: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-in/default(en-us).aspx
Visual Studio 2010 RC has a “Go-Live” license, means you can develop softwares/applications using it & publish it. As you all know the features of Visual Studio 2010 in the Beta release, but I am again posting the link of Visual Studio RC features & walkthrough guide here so that it will be beneficial for the new users.
Go here & have a look into the Visual Studio 2010 RC features and walkthrough guide: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/dd441784.aspx
One update regarding the RC release is it doesn’t support Silverlight 4 but you can load/create Silverlight 3 projects using that. According to Scott in his Blog Post: “Silverlight 3 projects are supported with today’s VS 2010 RC build – however Silverlight 4 projects are not yet supported.  We will be adding VS 2010 RC support for SL4 with the next public Silverlight 4 drop. If you are doing active Silverlight 4 development today we recommend staying with the VS10 Beta 2 build for now.” Hence, those who are actively working on Silverlight 4 should work on Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 instead of upgrading to the Release Candidate.
Complete this survey for Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Release Candidate: https://mscuillume.smdisp.net/Collector/Survey.ashx?Name=VS2010-RC
Last but not least, if you have any issue working with the RC version of Visual Studio 2010 or if you find any bug or if you have any future suggestions please never forget to report it at Microsoft Connect site: https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio

In this post I will discuss on how to create a Silverlight arrow. This will be beneficial for implementing Silverlight presentation where you can add some arrows to point to some blocks. This is simple enough to implement & will be beneficial for the beginners.

Create a Silverlight project. Now add a public class “Arrow” in it. Inside the Arrow.cs you have to add three lines (one is the base line, second is the left arrow head & the third is the right arrow head). Next you have to add those three lines inside a Panel.

Let’s start with creating the simple arrow in step-by-step process. First step is to create the base line of the arrow. Create a Line and set it’s (x1, y1) & (x2, y2). This will create the line.

private static Line CreateBaseLine(double startX, double startY, double length, Brush lineBrush, double thickness)
        {
            Line arrowLine = new Line();
            arrowLine.Stroke = lineBrush;
            arrowLine.StrokeThickness = thickness;
            arrowLine.X1 = startX;
            arrowLine.X2 = length;
            arrowLine.Y1 = startY;
            arrowLine.Y2 = startY;
            return arrowLine;
        }

Now lets create the left arrow head. The approach to it is same as creating the base line. Here only you have to pass the instance of the base line for calculating the (x1, y1).

private static Line CreateLeftArrowHead(Brush lineBrush, double thickness, Line arrowLine)
        {
            Line arrowLeft = new Line();
            arrowLeft.Stroke = lineBrush;
            arrowLeft.StrokeThickness = thickness;
            arrowLeft.X1 = arrowLine.X2 - 10.00;
            arrowLeft.X2 = arrowLine.X2;
            arrowLeft.Y1 = arrowLine.Y2 - 10.00;
            arrowLeft.Y2 = arrowLine.Y2;
            return arrowLeft;
        }

Creation of right arrow head is also similar to the one I mentioned for creating the left arrow head. The difference here is the y1.

private static Line CreateRightArrowHead(Brush lineBrush, double thickness, Line arrowLine)
        {
            Line arrowRight = new Line();
            arrowRight.Stroke = lineBrush;
            arrowRight.StrokeThickness = thickness;
            arrowRight.X1 = arrowLine.X2 - 10.00;
            arrowRight.X2 = arrowLine.X2;
            arrowRight.Y1 = arrowLine.Y2 + 10.00;
            arrowRight.Y2 = arrowLine.Y2;
            return arrowRight;
        }

Here instead of creating two separate methods for creating the two arrow heads you can just create only one method & pass the calculated (x1, y1) & (x2, y2). This is the simple approach mentioned here to give an idea to the beginner to create an arrow. It can be modified to implement some complex arrows like Horizontal, Vertical or even better Connected Arrows.

Download Sample Application: Silverlight Arrow Demo

codeproject