I use windows form with GlassForm(using Microsoft.WindowsAPICodePack.Shell;). my problem when I change form to GlassForm my textbox texts doesnt
Place a panel on the form set the dock style to fill, set the panel's BackColor to color X and then set the form's TransparencyKey to the same color X.
Yes, that's how it works. With the Aero Glass effect applied, anything drawn in the color black will be rendered as transparent. That includes text in a textbox control. This general theme has been the subject of many other questions here. When well-written, they gather lots of upvotes, but few answers.
There just aren't a lot of good solutions here. All of them that I've come across qualify as both "ugly" and "hackish". Owner-drawing is a reasonable approach when you're using something like a label control, but I wouldn't recommend trying to draw your own textbox—it's just too hard to get right. Someone tried to do that here; like I said, the result is both ugly and hackish. I wasn't satisfied with it for my own use, but it may work for you, depending on how high your standards are.
The goal with owner-drawing, of course, is either to do all of the drawing using GDI+ (which natively supports transparency) instead of GDI (which all of the built-in controls use by default), or calling functions like DrawThemeTextEx, which is specifically designed for rendering text with a shadow that is [somewhat] readable over glass.
As well, the usual tricks like enabling compatible text rendering (which causes the built-in controls to draw using GDI+ routines, as they did in the early versions of .NET) don't work for a textbox.
Honestly, your best bet is to place the textbox over a region of your form that is not rendered as glass. Use the DwmEnableBlurBehindWindow function to selectively enable the glass effect behind certain areas of your form, rather than the entire thing. I provide a complete, ready-to-use .NET implementation in my answer here.
Check this sample out:
http://www.danielmoth.com/Blog/Glass-In-C-An-Alternative-Approach.aspx
I was not studying it any further but putting a TextBox or Button or other components over this Aero glass area worked - the rendered component didn't have the transparency problem. The labels aren't perfect but these can be easily drawn with GDI+
The direct link to the sample project is here: http://www.danielmoth.com/Blog/MothGlass.zip
It looks like he puts a panel behind the control and setting the TransparencyKey for the panel.
Related
Basically, I want everything (Controls etc) to scale with the WindowsForm when resizing it by dragging, so that the user can determine the size of the UI himself.
The picture is not perfect, but I hope it explains it:
The easiest way to do this would be to use a (Flow/Table)LayoutPanel and the appropriate Anchor/Drop properties, but I feel like that restricts my design, which currently looks like this:
My idea was to scale all the components when Resize() is called:
foreach(Control c in Controls){
c.Scale(scaleFactor);
}
My problems are: Locations aren't set properly and the rounding needed to determine the 'scaleFactor' leads to inconsistencies.
Is there a clean way to do all this? Do I have to use LayoutPanels to get a clean way?
Are you sure that you want to zoom those text boxes and labels, too? Text boxes have a fairly standard height, for example. What do you expect if the window is so small that the text is too large for the buttons/text boxes, etc.?
The typical resizing logic of the contents of a resizable window is a little bit different. I would rather create a borderless panel for the groupboxes and stack/dock everything like this:
If I resize this window, that will look like this:
Btw, I do not like if buttons are resized like this. I would use only Anchor = Left, Right for them so they would preserve their height. And do not forget to set a proper MinimumSize for the form.
Simplest and cleanest way is use layout panles.
It's hard to code location of controls which depends of previous control's location and size (expect case when you know order of controls).
In WPF everything are on ContentControl which is layout panel. Location of control is calculated automatically.
Another problem might be scaling font or glyph icon in combobox. In WPF this simplest and supported.
I have got labels in my Windows Forms application which are placed next to controls.
When I change my language options to another language, the text needs more space now it covers my control.
Are there any ways to fix this problem?
No magic here I'm afraid. You have to try making your labels as (reasonably) wide as possible to accomodate each of your supported languages. Don't use AutoSize property here.
If labels appears on the left, have your text aligned to the right using the TextAlign property. This way they should always appear close to your control without ever overlapping them.
Also try to use containers to design your forms: TableLayoutPanel, FlowLayoutPanel. Controls that are placed in their cells, are autosized and wordwrapped correctly in most cases.
I want my TextBox to look like this
How can I remove the left and right sides of my TextBox control?
Normally, you'd have to override the OnPaint event to do this, for a Textbox however, this will not work because OnPaint wont get called.
An approach would be to subclass TextBox as described here
However I wouldnt suggest you to do this at all, it sounds like a daunting task to me (never did this myself), espacially when you are new to programming.
Maybe it would suffice to just draw a line above or beneath the TextBox?
-edit-
Maybe this will explain it better:
The TextBox is special in that you can't custom paint it.
If you just want a custom border, you can create a new UserControl and add a TextBox with border style set to None. Make sure you leave enough room around the outside of the TextBox for a border. Then paint the border on the UserControl surface.
An alternative method would be to handle the WM_NCPAINT message of the TextBox and paint the border then, but that is significantly more complicated.
Source: shawn.ohern in msdn forums: here
(Sorry I didnt know how to link to his post directly)
-edit2-
This link shows a way to create your own TextBox, which, again, I would not recommend to someone who is new to c# and programming ;)
Windows Forms is based on Win32 API which, unlike WPF which uses declarative language for describing UI, gives you full control of painting your own control.
Take a look here: Custom Control Painting and Rendering.
The closest I can think of using is the GroupBox control which has a custom drawing at the top identifying the panel.
Is it doable? I have done independent custom controls like buttons, sliders, color pickers, but not totally sure if this sort of drawing can be done on a GroupBox?
I would need the grouping of a GroupBox or a TabPanel.
Are there any alternatives on the net that I can use?
Just exploring the alternatives before I start doing it.
A technique we used was to create multiple panels docked to the top of a frame and set their height to zero. Then when we wanted to display a panel we set its height correctly. Winforms automatically reflows other panels to accommodate the new one.
You can also create a recurring timer to trigger every few hundred milliseconds that increases the panel's height by a few pixels until it reaches full size. This creates a nice animation of the panel expanding into place.
See how others have done this. Code Project's got a bunch. Try searching there.
I used this one a while ago and liked it:
Windows XP style Collapsible Panel Bar
Why not just create a composite control? Something to the effect of.. 2 panels or a label and a panel or whatever suits your needs. Drawing it wouldn't be all that difficult but seems overly complicated for your desired functionality. Am I completely missing the mark?
I can draw a 3D border using ControlPaint.DrawBorder3D, but I get the 'Windows Classic' 3D border. I want to draw the current theme's 3D border - in the default XP theme, this is a 1px blue or gray border. How do I draw that, and how do I get its widths?
Sounds like you might need to look at System.Windows.Forms.VisualStyles.VisualStyleRenderer:
The System.Windows.Forms.VisualStyles
namespace exposes VisualStyleElement
objects that represent all of the
controls and user interface (UI)
elements that are supported by visual
styles. To draw or get information
about a particular element, you must
set a VisualStyleRenderer to the
element you are interested in.
To draw an element, use the
DrawBackground method. The
VisualStyleRenderer class also
includes methods, such as GetColor and
GetEnumValue, that provide information
about how an element is defined by the
current visual style.
There's a code sample on that page as well.
You will have to draw the border yourself, but you can get the color from VisualStyleElement.Window.Caption.Active and the size should be the size of the window frame (I believe), which is VisualStyleElement.Window.FrameBottom.Active. If you explore the VisualStyleElement.Window, you should be able to determine which window element has the information you need to draw your border.
Pre .NET Framework 2.0 Answer
I'm assuming that you are drawing your own, special control and you want to use elements of the currently active theme to draw it so it better fits with standard XP controls. You're NOT trying to, for example, enable theming on a standard Button control. Correct?
It's actually somewhat complicated. Your main focus should be UxTheme.dll. This houses everything you need for drawing themed controls. Here is a nice C# wrapper around this dll to make your life easier. There are others so if this isn't exactly what you wanted, I hope I've pointed you in the right direction.