Effects (DropShadowEffect) in Windows Phone 7

Question

I noticed the Effect Property is missing in Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 so I did some googling and apperently it was dropped due to performance reasons. I basically want to do something like this

<TextBlock ...>
    <TextBlock.Effect>
        <DropShadowEffect/>
    </TextBlock.Effect>
</TextBlock>

And

<Image ...>
    <Image.Effect>
        <DropShadowEffect/>
    </Image.Effect>
</Image>

So is there some other way to get a DropShadowEffect in Silverlight for Windows Phone 7? And are there any news if it'll be in the next release?

Thanks

Answer 1

With the image you can just simply create a drop shadow in Photoshop/Gimp etc (works well for me) and save it as .png.

With TextBlock it is a bit harder. For instance, create a half-transparent image with the shadow and place both TextBlock and the Image inside the Canvas. Change the Canvas.ZIndex="integer" attached property to place them in a specific order - image has to be underneath. Also shadow should be blurred.

The drawbacks are:

• Shadow is static.
• Doesn't really suit metro UX.

Answer 2

<TextBlock ...>
 <TextBlock.RenderTransform>
  <TranslateTransform X="3" Y="3" />
 </TextBlock.RenderTransform>
</TextBlock>

<TextBlock ...>
</TextBlock>

I wanted a shadow effect and this worked for me. You need to put same content in both textblocks (except textblock name). X and Y are the horizonatal and vertical distance of shadow from text. You can also use negative numbers if depending on position of shadows.