Due to real estate/space constraints, I want to put a Printer icon on a button rather than the text "Print"
Yet I see no obvious way to do that (No "Image" property or so on the button).
Is it possible (without jumping sideways through flaming hoops)?
The standard button does not support images, no. You have to create a custom control. This was such a common request that Microsoft released an article on MSDN showing how to do it.
I'd argue that they would have been better served just creating the support in the Button (after all, they had several releases after that article) but they didn't ask me.
Related
I have an app where you could go through in views like;
play -> normal or custom -> select map -> summary -> start
I would like to make a shortcut option from play to summary, but I also want navigation back to select map page with the back button functionality.
So the normal workflow p->noc->sm->summary but I want to implement p->sm with the noc<-sm<-summary back functionality too (with the windows phone back button).
I saw how can I delete items from the backstack, but google not helped me how can I navigate through a couple of windows without showing that to the user.
Am I need to override the back button or there is a "better" way to do that?
It's a WP8 project.
Edit:
I didnt need the exact codesnippet for this just a design concept in this patform. (just for the is it duplicated guy)
My normal or custom and select map page should be randomized when I do the shortcut, both of these pages has a "button" which can randomize those settings, I just want a swipe->press->swipe->press->swipe actions shortened to a button press without loosing the 'post modification after randomized' feature.
After I read your comments I think I will handle the back button all of the mentioned views so the backstack will not be getting inconsistent at any state. If I understand well I can tell it in every page what is the "backed" page.
You can't inject pages into the backstack. You can override the back button and do a forward navigation with the animations you would normally do when going backward (and then remove the page you just came from off the stack), but honestly, this all gets complicated and for good reason. One of the few hard truths of Windows Phone design is that you shouldn't mess with the backstack.
Instead, I would rethink your flow. It seems like your second page is a setting of some sort (Normal or Custom). If that is changeable, maybe make a button that can float a modal popup on top of the page and move things around according to the new decision.
Looking again at your flow, it seems like several of the pages may be settings. Can you combine those into one page, maybe on a pivot or panorama? That way making changes is just a swipe away.
Regardless, while it is possible to do what you are looking to achieve, I would look long and hard at whether it is actually the best experience for your users.
is it possible to take a screenshot of what a textbox holds when the user presses the sumbit button for example?
EDIT: this is an aspx webpage
In short, no it is not possible to do this in a consistent, cross browser fashion (that I am aware of). If your textbox was implemented inside of a flash movie, it would be possible to take a 'screenshot' of what the flash movie was displaying when a button was pressed (discussion on this subject available here). But otherwise, you are going to have to do this processing on the server.
You could simulate this process by having the server render a copy of the page itself (feeding it the data the user entered) and then doing what you wanted with it from there. There are free and paid for solutions to assist you in taking a screenshot of a website (browse options available here).
On the client side I think you're stuck with the limitations of javascript, which might not be possible. Here is another question that is very similar to yours:
Take a screenshot of a webpage with JavaScript?
In the general sense, no, you can't. However if you have a constrained environment (e.g. kiosk, intranet), you can create a browser plug-in which can essentially do anything, including snapping a screenshot and sending it to the server.
If you have lots of control over the environment, you can create your own web browser which can take screenshots. In fact, I've done this with C#. I just wrote an app that hosts a browser control and sends screenshots to the server on certain key presses or at a user-defined interval.
I am trying to create a panel which will have a set of "buttons" on it.
These buttons should have the following behaviour:
Appear similar to a tag (with
rounded edges)
Contain a red
cross to remove the filter/tag from
the panel, similar to the way internet
explorer tabs have an embedded cross to close the individual tab.
allow the user to click
on the tag and respond like a normal
button (as long as the click is not
in the red cross)
Number 1 is no problem, this is just appearance, however, regarding numbers 2 and 3, I am not sure if there is already code out there do to something similar...and I dont really want to reinvent the wheel if I can avoid it!
My question is: Does anyone know if there is something out there in infragistics which will do this simply, or will I need to write this myself by subclassing winform buttons?
Thanks in advance!
Is this new development or maintenance of an existing project?
If it is maintenance, you have a somewhat tougher time ahead. You'll implement a UserControl, probably segmented into two buttons. Use docking to get the behavior as correct as possible. The far right button would contain your cross image; the left (which would need to auto-expand as you resize the control) would contain your primary button behavior. Play with the visual styles until you get them right (EG, removing borders, etc).
If this is new development, and you haven't gotten too far into it, you might consider using Windows Presentation Framework (WPF) instead of WinForms. It will be easier to build the control and get it to look exactly how you want it. WPF includes an extremely powerful control compositing system which allows you to layer multiple controls on top of each other and have them work exactly as you'd expect, and it carries the added advantage of allowing full visual control out-of-the-box.
Either way, this is more work than dropping in an external component ... I've used Infragistics for years, and I can't think of anything they have which is comparable. The closest, but only if you're building an MDI application and these controls are for window navigation, is the Tabbed MDI window management tools -- and there, only the tabs (which replace window title bars) have this behavior.
I don't think that infragistics can do something like this. The UltraButton control can't.
Implementing a own control wouldn't be that hard.
your probably going to have to make a costume control for this type of work.
I'm searching a C# component or code snipped that does something like that:
I want to inform new users about the most important program functions if he opens a new window for example.
It should be a box showing text (formated if possible) that is of course not modal and has some mechanism to 'go out of the way' if the user enters the textbox area. So that he can access what's underneath it. Alternativly the window could also stick to the border of the window, but there needs to be a way that this also works if the window is maximized.
So I want to present him with a short introduction of what he can do in every corner of my app most painlessly.
Thank you!
I use a "bar" at the top of every window to display some information about the current window/dialog.
Use tooltips. They can be programmatically controlled, and you can have them appear at will. You'll need to add the functionality to your app to keep track of what tooltips have been shown to the user already.
You can add a "balloon" style by setting the IsBalloon property to true.
You can also replace them with smaller descriptions for when the user wants to hover over the control and have them displayed again.
I'm already using tooltips heavily. However, they aren't very practical when displaying bigger amounts of data and they are bound to specific user actions.
Have you considered having a contextual menu for each form / page which contains links to Adobe Captivate style presentations for each available task? That way the user can investigate an example of how to achieve a task relating to what they are trying to achieve from within the application / site.
This approach would require a good deal of maintenance and management if your code changes regularly but coordinating it with a training department can provide rich help features in your application.
See http://www.adobe.com/products/captivate/ for more information.
I am looking for a decent replacement for the standard windows YES/NO or YES/NO/CANCEL MessageBox.
I have often seen these standard dialogs misused in ways such as: "To save in plain text answer YES, or to save in html answer NO". Obviously, the text should read "Save As: and the "buttons should be labeled "Text" and "HTML". It is not a yes/no question that is being asked, and although it could be phrased that way, it would not be easy to read and understand.
Microsoft gives no way to change the text on the buttons. There is no fast/simple way to build a replacement from scratch... as evidenced by the number of applications using the awkward style mentioned above.
Is there any free C# replacement dialog or MessageBox out there that lets you at least:
- specify the number of buttons
- specify the text to appear on each button
- specify the default button
I have looked and have been unable to find one.
(I would build one myself, but I am not familiar enough with all the behaviors that a fully functional control should have, since I only need/use/know a small subset. Two examples I don't use: themes and internationalization. I need something that my coworkers will also want to use.)
Check out Dissecting the MessageBox on CodeProject. The project is a bit dated, but it's pretty much exactly what you're looking for and it shouldn't take much to update it.
Depending on your target platform, a task dialog may be a good way of doing this. There is a .NET wrapper for task dialogs in the Windows API Code Pack. However these are provided only in Windows Vista and above, not in XP or 2003.
Frankly, it is not that difficult to create such a Messagebox yourself, we have such a thing working in the current app we are developing.
What you need is a FlowLayout for the buttons that will auto-align any buttons you create. Our API then has something like (params Tuple<string,DialogResult>[] buttons)
Tuple is a helper class that contains two values. The string is the Text of the button, the Dialogresult is the one our messagebox returns when the button with said text is clicked.
I agree with Frank. It wouldn't be too difficult to create your own generic form that handles this for you. Without getting into code, the form should do the following
1) Have a property to set the message you want to show to the user.
2) Have a method for adding buttons, with 2 arguments, one for the button text, and one for the dialog result
3) When the form is displayed, it should be in modal dialog mode so that the rest of the application is inactive while until one of the options is clicked.
So, to create a Save As/Don't Save/Cancel, you would add 3 buttons in step 2, all with the appropriate button text and dialog result.
Using Flow layout, you should be able to get it to display properly regardless of the size of the message, or the number of buttons.