Windows store app magnifier

Question

I am working on a drawing app for Windows 8.1 and needed a simple way to display the area the user is touching. Obviously it's hard to see where you're drawing when you are using your finger. What I needed to do was to be able to render a target element as a bitmap, and display it to the user so they can see where they are drawing. What I came up with is in the answer below.

Answer 1

The code is below. To use it, simply add the control in XAML (or programatically) wherever you would like, and set the Target property to the control that you would like to preview.

For instance, in my case I was drawing on top of a WebView, so I set the WebView as the Target, and added the Magnifier as a sibling to the WebView.

public class Magnifier : Grid
{
    public Magnifier() : base()
    {
        this.Canvas = new Canvas();

        Border border = new Border();
        border.HorizontalAlignment = HorizontalAlignment.Left;
        border.VerticalAlignment = VerticalAlignment.Top;
        border.Child = this.Canvas;
        border.BorderBrush = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Red);
        border.BorderThickness = new Thickness(10);
        border.Background = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Black);

        this.Children.Add(border);

        this.border = border;
    }

    public async Task<object> Update(int x, int y)
    {
        this.Visibility = Visibility.Visible;

        // changes the amount of magnification
        int magnification = 2;

        // render the preview of the target
        RenderTargetBitmap bitmap = new RenderTargetBitmap();
        await bitmap.RenderAsync(this.Target);

        this.Canvas.Width = this.PreviewWidth;
        this.Canvas.Height = this.PreviewHeight;

        double w = this.PreviewWidth / (2 * magnification);
        double h = this.PreviewHeight / (2 * magnification);

        ImageBrush brush = new ImageBrush();
        brush.ImageSource = bitmap;

        double scaleX = this.Target.ActualWidth / this.PreviewWidth;
        double scaleY = this.Target.ActualHeight / this.PreviewHeight;

        TransformGroup transform = new TransformGroup();
        TranslateTransform translate = new TranslateTransform();
        translate.X = -(x - w) / scaleX;
        translate.Y = -(y - h) / scaleY;
        transform.Children.Add(translate);

        ScaleTransform scale = new ScaleTransform();
        scale.ScaleX = scaleX * magnification;
        scale.ScaleY = scaleY * magnification;

        transform.Children.Add(scale);

        brush.Transform = transform;

        Rectangle rect = new Rectangle();
        rect.Width = this.PreviewWidth;
        rect.Height = this.PreviewHeight;
        rect.Fill = brush;
        this.Canvas.Children.Clear();
        this.Canvas.Children.Add(rect);

        Ellipse centerDot = new Ellipse();
        centerDot.Width = 6;
        centerDot.Height = 6;
        centerDot.Fill = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Red);

        Canvas.SetLeft(centerDot, this.PreviewWidth / 2 - 3);
        Canvas.SetTop(centerDot, this.PreviewHeight / 2 - 3);

        this.Canvas.Children.Add(centerDot);

        return null;
    }

    public Canvas Canvas { get; set; }
    public int PreviewWidth { get; set; }
    public int PreviewHeight { get; set; }
    private Border border = null;
    public FrameworkElement Target { get; set; }
}