I am doing a desktop application for calendars,sticky notes,diary,todolist,reminders and sending and receiving e-mail. I want to make a widget for all this.Wiget should also display messages if new mail is received. but i dont know from where to start making a widget.let me know is there are some controls in visual studio to make widgets or not.From where is should start.
You're looking for WPF. It's a steep learning curve, but you'll be able to virtually make any app you want. It supports real transparency, you can design the app the way you want without borders. You're looking for Window.WindowStyle = WindowStyle.None. Start from here.
Note that it won't be a 'widget' as the clock widget in Windows 7 for example. You'll make a normal desktop app (.exe) but with special functionality.
Bottom line, you can do that (and more) in WPF but you'll want to be comfortable around it first.
Related
For background, I am currently writing an OpenTK app that should show a message box if an error occurs. Usually on Windows-only apps this is easily done with Winforms, but I would like this to work on not just Windows, but Linux and Mac as well. So far, my search for potential solutions has not turned up anything useful to my use case.
I'd prefer to stay away from full UI libraries if possible as to make my app as light as possible. I just want it to use the system-native message box.
Are there any existing libraries that can do this? If there aren't, then how could I go about writing my own implementation, if possible?
How does one create a desktop application for Windows 10 that is always on the Desktop?
Like Widgets behaved. That is, having "always on top" when you go to "Show desktop" but not on top of other windows all the time.
So the application behaves like a desktop background if that makes sense.
Here's how you could achieve it
Learn how to use WinForms or UWP so that you can create the different widgets with a user-friendly UI. Microsoft has an additional tool called Microsoft Blend, you can create good user interfaces with it.
Read about C# and how it works. You can program the functionality to make the Widgets stay on your desktop and not disappear when clicking the bar on the bottom right of your taskbar.
You might need to google a lot of things until you are ready to do it.
Look at examples
WinWidgets is an open-source widget project hosted on GitHub by me. You can clone the repository and take a look at how it works.
It covers your requirements and I'm sure you can learn how to do it on your own if you give it a shot.
Having recently bought a Windows Phone I can say the one feature I sorely miss from my Android phone is Swype. This was a custom keyboard where you trace your finger over the keyboard to create words. Its very fast and basically I think its awesome.
Anyway! There is no Swype on WP7... The reason for this I hear is because it is impossible to change the keyboard programmatically in Windows phone. I would like to know from the community if things have changed or are likely to change in this area, or if there are any workarounds to programmatically inject a custom keyboard into the UI to allow input with any text field.
Disclosure - if it becomes possible I would like to develop a swype like app, however it would likely be because I miss it so much rather than as a commercial project!
Best regards,
There is no way to officially create a new keyboard that functions outside of your app. So, if you plan to release this in the marketplace, then it's not currently possible. You might be able to create a homebrew app that does this, but I don't think it would be very easy to replace the standard keyboard system wide. Of course, even if you did manage the homebrew version, it definitely wouldn't be allowed on the Marketplace.
You're limited by what Microsoft allows you to alter and they don't allow you to alter the keyboard. Furthermore Swype is a patented and very advanced technology that would be a humongous project for a single developer to work one. It's a good idea as lots of people like Swype but WP7 isn't Android.
I want to write a desktop gadget that will group icons on my desktop (using c# & WPF).
It will be a docked window that I can drag icons to it and they will stay their. Also there can be couple of this windows.
Where do I begin?
**I saw all the post here about it but I got lost. Please direct me to examples and explanation pages.
To expand on cevik's answer:
You cannot create WPF applications as gadgets BUT you have two options (which aren't as bad as you'd expect).
The reason is that widgets are composed mainly of web pages (HTML) and not executable (*.exe).
The problem of course is that WPF will only work with & produce executables.
First option - Windows API:
When I said you can't what I really meant is you can't use the Windows Vista/7 gadget platform to make your widgets.
However, you can always achieve a similar effect by using the Windows API.
The Windows API will let you do stuff to windows such as making them always on the background of other programs, which sounds to me like ~80% there (The rest would be stuff like making sure your window doesn't get re-sized or minimized, etc.).
Just as a note, the function you'd be looking for to make the window behind all other windows would be SetWindowPos (specifically the second parameter).
However make sure there isn't a library which already implements these stuff because it can be rather difficult (and consist of A LOT of surprises).
Second option - Silverlight
silverlight can be perceived as WPF for the web.
That obviously solves our problem.
However there is a cost to it, as expected.
Silverlight doesn't have all the features WPF has (possibly not all of the .NET framework as-well, not sure about that as I'm not really using it).
However it should be more than enough to get you by so you should definitely check it out.
Once you have your Silverlight application (and webpage) you'll have to create a manifest & install the gadget to your desktop. See here how to do so.
Maybe this will help you.
Template to easily get started on developing a Sideber Gadget using Silverlight 3.0 or 4.0 controls in C#.
What's the best way to convert a simple console application to a WPF? and I am a COMPLETE newb so be gentle!!
The console app displays information according to user choices.. real simple stuff, but I'd like to create a GUI for it in WPF.. and am looking for initial steps on how to go about it.
This, and this (video) might be worth checking out. They will get you started with building a WPF app, you'll need to figure out how to port your existing interface to WPF though, which might not be very straight forward because there is a large shift in building a console app (Console.WriteLine/Console.Read) and a GUI app with GUI objects with events and display properties.
I recommend jumping in with the links above and positing additional questions here when you get stuck.
First you need to think how the new interface will behave. A gui is different from console interaction.
Draw on paper the gui you want, buttons, text areas, etc.
Think about the logic and it should behave, i.e. wizard like, button interaction, etc.
Only then approach the implementation in WPF, for that look for some beginner tutorial, like ths