I’m using Word ContentControls to present & synchronize data coming from backend services. I need a way to indicate that content of a given control has changed. One way I can imagine this is to change style around given Range residing in ContentControl. Although this may not be as flexible as requirements I’ve got. The other way I can envision is to use GDI to draw necessary indicators myself. I know I can get handle of main word window but I’m struggling with finding a way to obtain handle to any CustomControl in it. Is that possible?
Use Microsoft's SPY++
i believe it can be downloaded from here
http://mdb-blog.blogspot.co.il/2010/11/microsoft-spy-or-spyxx-for-download.html
Information:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa264396(v=vs.60).aspx
Related
I've started using FlaUI for Automating my thick client .net application. The application is Windows Form based. The start was good and Login Form was identified and I could Login, but after that came the dead end and I found that almost everything in the application is developed as Pane control type.
So, there is grid, table etc. but they all just appear as Pane type when I see the object hierarchy using Inspect.exe or FLAUInspect tools. And nothing really appears in thier property, so it seems that nothing could be read. But before giving up I just wanted to check with experienced audience on this forum if there is really any way to get the data from Pane objects.
Please suggest if there is any way, even that means using other libraries like UIAutomation, TestStack.White, etc.
UPDATE: I now understand little more about this. So, the objects that are there in the pane are developed in syncfusion and devexpress. Is it possible to identify objects developed in syncfusion and devexpress using FlaUI or UIAutomation or TestStack.White, etc ?
I don't know if you have already tried the following steps. Have you add automationId's to your objects in xaml code with:
AutomationProperties.AutomationId="AnyID"
In the testcode, first initialize the main window of the application.
MainWindow = fApplication.GetMainWindow(fAutomation, null)?.AsWindow()
After that you can find your objects by the automationId's, like:
MainWindow .FindFirstDescendant(cf => cf.ByAutomationId(AnyID))
I did it this way, and don't have to know the hierarchy of my application. Maybe this will work?
Most UI Frameworks nowadays fully support UI Automation. So first make sure that you have a recent version of your framework (syncfusion, devexpress). In addition, some frameworks provide settings to enable UI Automation. Like for devexpress, you need to set
ClearAutomationEventsHelper.IsEnabled = false;
at the start of your application to test so it exposes way more things (like tabs) to FlaUI.
i'm writing because I have some hard times trying to get any automation-useful information about DevExpress controls. I do not have ability to see source code of application I'm testing, but UISpy and all other UI verifiers out there don't provide any information, including name, automationID and so on. The only thing that is available is info such as runtimeID, dynamically-assigned automationID and control type. Is there any chance to recognize these controls to get their unique properties? I know it must be some way since Visual Studio does that..
White is a wrapper for Microsoft's UI Automation Framework. As such, it uses Conditions on AutomationElemements' properties in order to find the appropriate element. UISpy is basically a visual reflection of what the UIA 'sees'. There are no other 'low level' properties.
Unfortunately, many developers and control vendors don't pay attention to setting a unique and indicative value for the AutomationID or Name properties, and thus make it hard to get the element you need.
The best solution I could give you is to create a helper method that works directly with UIA rather than with White, which gives you more flexibility in searching for your control. For example, if you have a DevExpress GridView, you could get all its child elements and query every single one of them for their relative position on the screen.
You could try with UI Automation Verify (UIA Verify). It will help you obtain the automationID.
I would like to know if there is a way to manipulate an App's UI live while running?
I am not a designer and I have many problems sometimes regarding matching colours etc.
The next problem is that anytime I would like to change e.g. the colour of a control I have to quit the App then go to VS2012, apply my changes, build and execute it again to see simple changes.
I know that I see any changes in the designer but I have to see the resulting screen to get an impression of the whole.
Is there a way to achieve this?
Add a secret keypress while Debug flag is set, that raises a form and allows you to select controls and expose a property sheet for them. Be a bit of work to get right, and a good stick of code even using reflection. Might be better off with a storyboard type app to do your designing.
Unlike styles in WPF which can be dynamically adjusted (which made this type of run-time adjustment simple), there isn't as elegant of a solution for Windows Store apps. Ideally, you'd have all of your UI and colors, etc. defined in XAML files and not settable through other means (as it becomes a longer term maintenance issue).
I'd suggest just adding enough test data and configuration so that you can see the look and feel of the pages (with colors, etc.) at design-time. Blend and Visual Studio are now quite good at showing a very reasonable near final rendering of the elements of the application. It's generally not too difficult to do anymore.
One thing I've done in the past was to make a single page/form that contained all of the styles and controls in a large scroll viewer. Then, we set it so it was configurable to the be the first thing to run. The tweak/build cycle was pretty fast, and the results were still very manageable.
Just wondering whether anybody has tried to hack into WPF DocumentViewer in order to make it more useful. I've spent almost a week already trying to create more powerful API for this control based on it's methods which I extract using reflection.
Everybody knows how to get selected text from document viewer via reflection but my task is more complicated. Selected text has End and Start properties which return ITextPointers. Also I have a collection of GlyphRuns extracted using this code. And now finally I want to find out which GlyphRun contains selection start.
So I want to know how to convert ITextPointers into GlyphRuns and vice versa. I understand that they do not have 1:1 relationship. This control with closed API and last week spent in Reflector doesn't let me sleep well. I hope maybe somebody tried to do it before or seen code samples and will be able to guide me through these jungles.
I would recommend that you abandon this approach. Doing lots of private reflection like this is not something you should be basing production code on, its very brittle and downright forbidden in some contexts. Frankly, you're better off finding a 3rd party control that suits your needs such as www.infragistics.com
Or if that's not an option you can probably create your own control in the amount of time you'll have to sink into getting this to work.
EDIT:
So, I ended up making my own basic solution to this problem, and it can be found in my own answer to the question below. Or, here's a link.
Original Post
I'm doing some UI programming for a small .NET application. The application has some collections of items that need to be displayed in a grid sort of format (X columns by Y rows) and the grid elements need to be able to get dragged around to different grid locations, and possibly out of the grid all together.
The most comparable sort of UI design elements I can think of are the jQueryUI Draggables.
Do I have to roll my own or are there components people have already written to act like this? Even better, are there any free components? Or is there an easy way to do this that I just don't know about (don't do a lot of .NET UI programming..)
Also these "grid items" need to be able to include windows form components. The DataRepeater control is close to what I need, except it only supports horizontal or vertical alignments, not grids of items.
Here's a visual example of what I'm looking for:
I tried to stick with a halloween theme here.
Well I rolled my own solution and hosted it on GoogleCode:
draggableitemorderedpanel- A .NET Winforms Component... Kinda like jQuery UI Draggables (not really, maybe someday)
here's a screenshot:
(source: googlecode.com)
and another just resized:
(source: googlecode.com)
Hope this helps someone else out. Also it's super basic and pretty sucks right now but gets the job done.
Anyone that wants project access can have it.
The System.Windows.Forms.TableLayoutPanel control supports dragging and dropping, you just have to handle the right events. You could make your own "GridItem" user control, with the icon, caption, background color, etc displayed on a Panel, and then plop a bunch of them in the tablelayoutpanel, and wire up some event handlers. Here's something similar:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/Vsexpressvcs/thread/1cade626-b76d-40c5-9e5a-101cf2a5e412