I'm writing a system tray app for Windows (with much info gleaned from this thread). I have the ContextMenu working - you can right click and execute functions that way.
I want to have a modern, rich interface pop up on a left click, however, much like most of the built in Windows 7 (and possibly Vista) tray icons have. By this I refer to the Aero lining, and apparent ability to add seemingly arbitrary controls (e.g. volume slider, network chooser).
I'm not really sure where to start. Is it a matter of creating a "normal" window and restricting it heavily? If so, how? (If it comes down to Windows Forms vs. WPF, the latter is preferable).
For what it's worth, you can display anything you like when you receive the mouse click on your notification icon. Usually it's a pop-up menu, but you could show a window instead.
Related
This is the Microsoft's Mail app on Windows 10. This app is Universal App.
I'm making an WPF app for windows 7. And here is it
I want to make my application able to handle responsive. When we resize the Window, Some of "Reply All" will hide and appear on the More button.
Currently, I make an WrapPanel to make all "Reply All" button is arrange base on windows size. How to make it Collapse and it only appear when we click on More btton (Like the Microsoft's Mail App)
My problem is how to determine which button need to hide. And how to make is become a item on More Button
As you say, things happen when you resize the windows. You should handle Window.SizeChanged event properly.
And making the whole ui responsive is a very broad topic.
I wanted to know if there are any good "growl" type notification windows available as open source or guided tutorials for WPF applications. I'm looking for a window that can appear when users save for example, notifying them that the save was successful and then disappears after X seconds (with a fade out) without the user needing to take the explicit action to close the notification window. This way for messages/notifications that require no confirmation, like the example, the user would not have to click "OK" to make the messagebox or dialog close.
This link could help you:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WPF/wpf_notifyicon.aspx
It is a Pure WPF implementation of the NotifyIcon class from WinForms and supports almost everything normal WPF controls do :)
Cheers
Why don't you use GrowlForWindows?
You can use C# or VB.
I'm currently designing an MDI application (a custom CRM) in .net 4.0 and i'm starting to dislike the whole interface simply because there's no real way to track which windows are open or closed and it'll probably lead to a very confusing interface.
What is the best way to avoid this?
- Should i implement a taskbar to track every open mdi child?
- Should i use dialogs instead to prevent multi-tasking?
- Is there any way to change the size of a minimized window on a mdi container (why are they so small, you can't even read the full form title that way...)
Sorry for so many questions, thanks in advance.
MDI has its uses, but as you've found can easily lead to a cluttered, hard-to-use interface. The current in-vogue way of dealing with this is to add a tab control (as in any web browser, or most text editors/IDEs) to allow switching between open views. This is close to a task bar I guess.
Other options are controls like the Outlook bar (the big view chooser down the left-hand side of Outlook) or possibly just a simple list box with the currently open views.
Alternatively, consider how often you really want multiple windows available and whether most of them are "tool windows". If so, perhaps look at using docking windows for these tool windows, and a Single Document interface for the rest of the app. All depends on what you're actually doing!
The MDI windowing management already has the built-in to track open windows by way of the menu. The ToolStripMenu has an MdiWindowListItem that you can set to a reference of the menu item that will contain the list of open windows. If the menu is attached to the MDI parent window, child windows automatically populate the menu item.
One of the objectives of MDI is to allow multitasking. If that's not what you want, use a different design.
As far as changing the size of the minimized windows, apparently it's not possible using the standard Windows interface. See more info here: Is it possible to change size of minimized window in MDI C# Winforms. But you could remove the standard Minimize button, add your own, and do what you want with the windows in a Normal state.
Our clients have fat fingers, and so do we. We take touchscreen netbooks apart to insert them into our custom hardware, and I write a software interface that shows up on the touchscreen. The problem is that it has about a 3/4" bezel over the screen, which means hitting that little red "X" becomes a challenge, especially considering reduced capacitive ability on the edges and corners.
Is there a way to make this standard close button larger? Of course in the application I can always make really nice 80x80 buttons that are perfectly usable, but there seems to be no way to override the default frame of the form. We have tried enabling Large Fonts and all the built-in accessibility features, but nothing seems to make it large enough to hit successfully.
Simply adding a toolbar button is also not much of an option. We prefer to utilize the standard look and feel of a normal Windows application.
Alternatively, should we be looking at making some sort of "kiosk mode" where we simply go fullscreen and do nothing involving the taskbar or title bar? How difficult is this to accomplish, if so?
Well, since you're setting up the hardware, I presume you're able to configure preinstalled software, including Windows. Can't you just go into Display Settings and make the title bar larger, so that the close button grows accordingly?
See MS Article about distributing windows themes: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310514
Getting a large close button is fairly easy to do. It is hidden well since Vista, in Win7 it is Control Panel + Personalization + Window Color, Advanced appearance settings, Item = Caption buttons, change the Size. You probably won't like this much though, you'll get a rather large caption bar, lots of waste screen real estate.
Tackling this from the other end: your request is unusual. Most anybody that sets up a touch screen app wants to know how to prevent the user from closing the window. Windows Forms makes it too easy to design a bunch of forms and switch between them. That isn't much of a user interface on a regular desktop, especially not here. You can design your forms as user controls as well and switch them in and out of the main window as the user navigates through the UI. Not unlike, say, Microsoft Outlook. You can even turn your existing form into a control. Set its TopLevel property to False, FormBorderStyle to None, Visible to true.
I've got a Windows Forms application in C# that starts off with a loading dialog. As expected, a button for the app shows up in the Windows taskbar.
I would like to detect right-clicks that might be done to that button.
Ultimately, I hope to disable the right-click or simply have the loading dialog regain focus. I've seen that some people use custom libraries and packages (interop, for example) to achieve some Win32 functionality, but I'd personally like to avoid this. Is it impossible to do without such libraries/packages?
How about just not showing the form in the taskbar by setting Form.ShowInTaskbar to false?