I have this progressbar control which i would like to be visible on several pages of my application. How to i create a "global" control like this?
Thanks
/Richard
A few questions:
What do you mean by global?
Would you like to create one instance
of your progressbar and share it?
What kind of control do you use? Is it UserControl?
Are you aware of this toolkit?
If not:
I assume that app shows the progressbar when user is downloading or app is doing work in background. Make a Popup to show it to the user. You can put it in the Resources Dictionary, and then dynamicly add it to visual tree. But wont gain any advantage.
It is not a good idea to have one control if your app is based on default navigation system(pages). I strongly advise you to use progressbar form the toolkit. Simply create an instance for each page.
You can't. But you could create a page which includes this progressbar and then show/hide/etc. as necessary.
There are two options for doing this:
a) create a Popup element in code without making it part of the element tree and assign your control as child of that Popup. Then use IsOpen=true to show it.
b) retemplate the PhoneApplicationFrame that is the root of your element tree and insert your global elements in the part of the template that is shared across all pages.
Related
My program will prompt the user for a number, i.e. 25. The program will then start the "main form" with 25 controls (textbox). The 25 (or whatever number) of textboxes (or whatever control) will need to be formatted evenly. I will also need to be able to retrieve the text (or another property if I use another control) in order, from left to right and up to down. What is the best method of approaching this?
Using WPF MVVM. In a .XAML file, create a DataTemplate with the DataType of a ViewModel that will provide the binding for your TextBoxs, lets call this the TextboxViewModel. Then using a ItemsControl element with an ItemsSource of TextboxViewModel. You'll be able to instantiate as many TextBoxs as you want and be able to get the result by browsing through your list of TextboxViewModel.
Supposing you are using Windows Forms here.
Dynamically create the X controls and add them to the Controls collection of your form. To ease the access to them you can store their reference in a List and set some event handlers too, depending on your needs. You just need to calculate their positions while you add them.
If WinForms, this is exactly what the FlowLayoutPanel is for. Just add the controls to it and they will arrange themselves automatically, wrapping down to the next row as needed. As Mihai already suggested, you could also keep reference to those controls in a List.
Another option would be to use a TableLayoutPanel. It's a little more difficult to learn and use, but is much more flexible and powerful.
Can someone suggest the best way to achieve my goal?
So, I have a form with three buttons. What I want is, depending on what button is pressed on panel should be shown different controls (user control). I made this in a simple way: all are added from the beginning, I just make change to the visibility. But what would be nice is, if someone can suggest a more appropriate way, because there is no need to have objects created from beginning.
You can always create the appropriate UserControl, and add it to the Panel.Controls at runtime. This will allow you to create the control(s) as needed, instead of on initialization of your Form.
I would indeed create the controls at design time - if there's advantage no to dynamically create them. Why complicate matters?
If there are a number of controls I would put them all in a panel (within the panel you've already mentioned) so you're only changing the visibility of a single control (the panel) rather than each one within it.
When you press the appropriate button show the appropriate panel (and remember to hide the others in case you've previously shown them)
I'm developing a WPF application in C# and was thinking about implementing a custom UI element accross various windows.
I would like to have a minimized tray (only about 4px visible) that expands after clicking on an icon next to the tray. The expanded version would show all controls and would minimize when I click the icon again. I created a quick HTML concept to clarify things.
I know I could put a stackpanel and button in my application and making both of them move up when I click the button, but then I would need to duplicate the code a lot.
Though I'm experienced with C#, I'm fairly new to WPF interface development/templates, but I'm sure there has to be a way so I can use that UI element accross my application without needing to copy/paste a lot of lines of code in my form class file.
I hope someone can help me, or at least point me in the right direction.
There are three ways to customize your elements.
1 If you only need visual modifications you can use styles to change the appearance of the .net default controls. You can even override / extend the default templates.
2 If you want custom logic in a control you can create a custom control. The framework brings a lot of "primitives" to build upon. Examples are ContentControl or HeaderedContentControl. Say you want to build a custom expander control you can inherit your custom control from HeaderedContentControl which provides you with Header and Content properties and you just have to implement the toggling logic yourself.
CustomControls are a good choice if you want to build basic functionality which can be used throughout your application. They can be themed/styled depending on the use case, too (see 1).
3 If you want to compose different controls into one control you can create a UserControl. User controls are composed using XAML. Most top level controls are user controls driven by a view model.
Your case can be build using a Popup and ToggleButton or an Expander.
The decision depends on the desired behavior. If you want the opened panel to move following content down you need a expander. If you want a dropdown like functionality you need popup.
If you use a popup just bind the IsPopupOpen Property to IsChecked of the ToggleButton and set PopupStaysOpen = false to wire the button to your popup.
If you use an expander control you should create a style which can be applied to all equal expanders in your application to minimize the required XAML in each view.
How about using Expander Control?
There's a control called an Expander that is perfect for this. You'll have to style it to look like you want, however it has the functionality you want built-in.
I need to implement TabControl-like behaviour with manual (on event, on a button click for example) pages switching and having all pages designed and implemented as separate forms. A form to be incorporated (as a panel control) inside main form and replaced by another form as needed.
How to achieve this?
PS: The reason why I don't want to use TabControl instead is because there are going to be too many tabs - I'd prefer to present the list of them as a TreeView and instantiate on demand. The another reason comes from another project of mine - there I am going to implement plug-ins, where a panel inside main window will be provided by a class loaded dynamically and will be runtime-switchable.
I need to implement TabControl-like behaviour with manual (on event, on a button click for example) pages switching and having all pages designed and implemented as separate forms
May I ask why this is a requirement? It seems like the logical approach would be to create a set of UserControls. You can place a UserControl in a form, and you can place a UserControl in a tab. You get modularity without the headache of implementing a very odd requirement which is a use case that the API developers obviously did not think was valid. I just can't think of a good reason to take the route you have suggested.
I did similar thing once, and for that reason, I have ReplaceControl method, which I paste below:
static public void ReplaceControl(Control ToReplace, Form ReplaceWith) {
ReplaceWith.TopLevel=false;
ReplaceWith.FormBorderStyle=FormBorderStyle.None;
ReplaceWith.Show();
ReplaceWith.Anchor=ToReplace.Anchor;
ReplaceWith.Dock=ToReplace.Dock;
ReplaceWith.Font=ToReplace.Font;
ReplaceWith.Size=ToReplace.Size;
ReplaceWith.Location=ToReplace.Location;
ToReplace.Parent.Controls.Add(ReplaceWith);
ToReplace.Visible=false;
}
Only thing left to do is to create some control manually on the form, as the placeholder for your Form. Use label, for example.
You could do this with an MDIForm as the main form, and then plain-old Forms as the separate forms. Or you could encapsulate each element's functionality as a UserControl which you can then swap out on your form in code.
The advantage of encapsulating your UI elements as UserControls is that if, for whatever reason, you need them to become forms in your application, you can just drop the UserControl on a form.
Update: Since you want to use a TreeView to select what the user is looking at, you definitely want to do this as a bunch of UserControls. The layout is simple: TreeView on the left, and whichever control is active on the right.
There's no need to justify not using a TabControl - tabs are the worst UI element in history.
I have inherited a control from Panel-Class.
I have added some events to this control. I gave move - ability to this control
and so on ..
I have two display screens. I have a main program where the inherited
panel is displaying an image on a small area. I want to show this panel
fullscreen on a second.
I created a new form and use the same control... But i can not move both screens
together. What should I do ?
If you want to be able to manipulate both forms at the same time, show the second form with Show() instead of ShowDialog(). You can certainly pass the original panel to the second form and add it to the form's Controls collection. I am not sure if this is the best way to do it (sharing one control across two forms), but I don't know your requirements either.
I wouldn't use a second form, but a second 'mode' (fullscreen vs. not) on your existing form.
You can have 2 panel controls, or just one and resize.
I think this kind of behaviour calls for a model-view pattern. If that's implemented, the rest should fall into place.
The problem is that you only have one instance of your inherited panel. You actually have to make another "copy" of it, a new instance, before you can add it to the other form.
Mypanel mypanel1 = new Mypanel();
Mypanel mypanel1copy = new Mypanel();
You can either edit these instances to contain the same data all the time through the run, or use something like "Deep Copy":
How do you do a deep copy of an object in .NET (C# specifically)?
Keep in mind, that any changes to mypanel1 should be done to mypanel1copy, too.