How to implement Pointer-/MouseMoveEvents in Xamarin UWP app? - c#

I have a Xamarin app. (Only) for the UWP app I need access to the mouse events (PointerMoved- / PointerEntered / PointerPressed-Events).
Until now my entire codebase is shared code.
Can somebody help me with forwarding the mouse events to the shared Code base? I googled a lot and nearly all answers either suggest a paid libary called "MR.Gestures" or say that it is not possible to recieve mouse Events (like this one I am not able to implement MouseUp, MouseDown and mouseMove Events in Xamarin Mobile applications). Sometimes GestureRecogniser are mentioned, but they Arent extensible, so how are they supposed to help?
Is there really no way to recieve mouse Events in xamarin?

You can do this. However it is a very extensive work to the level that you might consider to write your app in the native UWP XAML and share some C# code with the Xamarin project instead.
The way would be to extend each control that you are going to use (yes every single control that needs this effect), add to it those events and then write the UWP custom renderers that would invoke those events and then replace all controls in your XAML with those controls.
As said this may turn to be quite extensive work, but that's how it can be done.
Also if you don't need those events but just some visual effects on those events it may be possible to cut on this work by writing a custom XAML styles for those controls in app.xaml in the UWP project.

Related

Embed Windows.Form in WPF application

I was wondering, is there a consequence to embed a Windows.Form element in a WPF application ?
I don't really know the difference between both architectures, but mixing them can have negative impacts ?
There are always consequences with such choices.
Mainly winform doesn't support wpf event mechanism for bubbling event and dependency properties, you have to wrap it up if you want to use some binding and follow the MVVM pattern.
Besides, it will not be a part of the visual tree if I remember well. It will create an other form over the form of your application, i.e. an other window handle...
Not impossible, but You got to wondering yourself If it is worth it.

Native UI using WPF

I'm switching from Windows Forms to WPF, but WPF's GUI is really ugly. It looks like Windows 95 or something like that.
Example:
Left is a new WPF project
Right is a new Windows Forms project
Both only have a button and textbox added to the project, no other changes.
As you can see, WPF doesn't have the "native Windows GUI". I know that I can use themes, but I just want the native Windows GUI. Isn't there any setting to do this without themes? I've found this but I didn't change anything in the project except for the button and the textbox and it still doesn't look native.
See this workaround. there's some button styles there to make the buttons look more similar to the native ones. Other than that, see here the official statement from Microsoft that this difference is actually by design. They made intentional changes to the themes to make them more lightweight by removing gradients and such.

External application - mouse click event within grid

I have an external windows application (no source code) that has a grid within it. This runs as a separate process. When the user selects a cell within the grid via mouse click, I need to be able to read the value within that cell. Can anyone provide some direction on what API's I would need to use to be able to trap and listen to the events?
You best option is UI Automation Overview or accessibility as older technology.
Also you could take a look at this Pinvoke SetFocus to a particular control on how to invoke things on another process (pretty much unrelated to automation, automation works w/o that)
UI Automation is the best tool for the job, however, the downside is that not every app supports that - so this very much depends on the app you're targeting. Some support only the legacy acessibility (IAccessible, IAccessible2 etc.), usually there is a 'combined' approach. Older techniques don't work very good any more but you could try traversing windows, child windows in the target window (for that direction you'll probably need the above technique sooner or later) and hoping you could get it from standard controls, windows text, via messages etc.

how to code Windows phone 7 UI only programatically (in .cs file)without using designer

I'm newbie for Windows phone 7 development.
Usually the User interface Design is done with a Designer and Drag & Drop. But In my project I have to code all user interface programmatically, that is manually write design controls in .Cs file instead of .xaml file.
Is it possible? I have tried googling it, I haven't found any tutorial or documentation yet.
Could someone please help me to start my process.refer some documentation or books
Thanks
I definitely think you can do everything without XAML if you want to.
The basic approach should be to create a basic app with App.xaml and an almost empty Page.xaml. After this you should be able to dynamically add controls to meet your needs.
The majority of this work is quite straight-forward
creating controls, setting properties, adding event handlers are all easy.
The more awkward things will be things like producing animations, visual states, styles and databindings - the XAML syntax for these is quite convenient compared to the C#
Also, if you need multiple pages, then using navigation is also a bit more awkward - the NavigationService is currently built around XAML-based pages.
In iron7, I've written lots of single page apps without using XAML. All the code is in IronRuby rather than C#. As a developer, I think you should be able to follow most of them - take a look at these examples on script.iron7.com:
create a UI with some text boxes and some buttons
a calculator with animations
fingerpaint - canvas and "mouse" touch
panorama control and pivot control
Tetris
To run these scripts just download iron7free from the marketplace. To convert them back into C# is mainly a case of removing some "_" characters, modifying some capitalization and turning def's into C# methods.
Note - for clarification, I am not recommending you write your app in Ruby - it's just that these are the only examples I have of writing an app in code instead of XAML.
You have to create a basic xaml page first with at least a stack panel on it.
Then you can add controls to your stack panel like this
TextBox textbox = new Textbox();
textbox.Text = "TEST";
PageStackPanel.Children.Add(textBox);
You do have drag and drop ability for the Windows Phone 7 development. Download the Visual Studio for Windows Phone 7 and try the samples. http://www.microsoft.com/express/Phone/
Here is a tutorial for the starters:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/somasegar/archive/2010/03/15/introducing-windows-phone-7-development-tools.aspx
Well its the Silverlight framework. You can code it by hand using XAML (eXtensible Application Markup Language)
Charles Petzold is writing a book on Windows Phone 7 programming, you can download it free here:
http://www.charlespetzold.com/
Generally I don't like the designer and try to avoid it as much as possible. I find writing Xaml easier.
But I also try to avoid the use of Xaml because:
Performance: the C# code is definitely faster
Programming style: I hate when the related code is scattered over several files. It's not only my C# code, but also hidden auto-generated code (sometimes containing unnecessary constructs).
Debugging: Xaml allows for more bugs (e.g. incorrect spelling), Xaml bugs are more difficult to localize
Having said that, I have to disagree with Stuart: Certain things cannot be done in C#, you need to do them in Xaml. For example:
Visual states: You cannot set readonly property VisualStateGroup.Name in C#, but you can use x:Name attribute in Xaml.
UserControl.Content is protected (for SVL3 and thus also for WP7), but Xaml bypasses this limitation
Etc. (There are more such special things.)

Gtk Widget into a Winform

Is it possible to embed a Gtk widget into an application using System.Windows.Forms? Thanks!
Both toolkits use their own separate "UI Mainloop" to process events (such as mouse moves, button presses, etc.). As such, mixing the two is effectively impossible. Although there was talk on the Gtk# mailinglist several years ago about attempting to use a custom mainloop that pumped the event handling of each toolkit to enable such an approach, I don't think anything stable or useful came from it.

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