ElementSnapshot Control

1 . A method for depicting a visual representation in a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) scene, the method comprising:

receiving an element from a WPF application that is used to render a bitmap image;

determining whether the bitmap image has been previously generated;

if the image has been previously generated, retrieving the generated bitmap;

if the image has not been previously generated, using a native WPF class to generate the bitmap; and

rendering the generated bitmap into the WPF scene.

2 . The method recited in claim 1 further comprising:

caching the generated bitmap in a cache; and

examining the cache when determining whether the bitmap image has been previously generated.

3 . The method recited in claim 1 further comprising:

receiving with the element a screen space in with which to render a bitmap; and

rendering the generated bitmap into the WPF scene within the screen space.

4 . The method as recited in claim 1 further comprising continuously receiving the render requests to re-render the element from the WPF Application each time the application needs to render the bitmap image.

5 . The method as recited in claim 1 wherein a format of the bitmap is selected from a group of bitmap formats comprising: BMP, JPEG, TIFF, GIF, and PNG.

6 . The method as recited in claim 1 wherein if the image has been previously generated, retrieving the generated bitmap from a cache.

7 . The method as recited in claim 1 wherein the generated bitmap is rendered for insertion into a portion of the WPF scene as indicated by WPF.

8 . A computer readable medium comprising computer-executable instructions for depicting a visual representation in a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) scene that, when executed by one or more processors, perform acts comprising:

receiving an element from a WPF application that is used to render a bitmap image;

automatically determining whether the bitmap image has been previously generated;

if the image has been previously generated, retrieving the generated bitmap from a cache;

if the image has not been previously generated, using a native WPF class to generate the bitmap; and

rendering the generated bitmap for insertion into the WPF scene.

9 . The computer readable medium as recited in claim 8 , wherein the bitmap generated using the native WPF class is stored in the cache after being generated.

10 . The computer readable medium as recited in claim 8 further comprising:

caching the generated bitmap in a cache using the native WPF class; and

examining the cache when determining whether the bitmap image has been previously generated.

11 . A method for depicting a visual representation in a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) scene, the method comprising:

periodically receiving one or more elements from a WPF application that are used to render bitmap images;

determining whether one of the bitmap images corresponding to one of the received elements has been previously generated;

if the image has been previously generated, retrieving the generated bitmap corresponding to the one of the received elements;

if the image has not been previously generated, using a native WPF class to generate the bitmap for the received one of the elements; and

rendering the generated bitmap into the WPF scene.

12 . The method as recited in claim 10 wherein the bitmap is rendered into the WPF scene via a call to a DrawImage method of a WPF DrawingContext class.

13 . The method as recited in claim 10 wherein the native WPF to generate the bitmap is a WPF RenderTargetBitmap class.