Using C# winforms, i want to create custom controls that looks like the real ones.
There are a lot of classes that can be used to draw controls that looks like the real ones: ControlPaint, VisualStyleRenderer, ButtonRenderer, CheckBoxRenderer, ComboBoxRenderer, GroupBoxRenderer, ProgressBarRenderer, RadioButtonRenderer, ScrollBarRenderer, TabRenderer, TextBoxRenderer, TextRenderer, ToolStripProfessionalRenderer, ToolStripRenderer, ToolStripSystemRenderer, TrackBarRenderer.
The problems coming when considering visual styles: I want to be visual styles independent. Meaning: I dont care if user allowing visual-styles or not, i want it to work. if user enabled visual-styles, i want to draw it using visual-styles, otherwise i want to draw it without visual-styles.
By the MSDN documentation, the only classes that are visual-styles independent are ButtonRenderer, CheckBoxRenderer, GroupBoxRenderer, RadioButtonRenderer. That means that for all other cases i need to check myself if visual-styles enabled and use different code to draw the parts.
Suppose i want to draw a Tab control parts myself. TabRenderer class has all needed functionality for that, but it works only if user enabled visual styles. otherwise I need to use ControlPaint class to draw, but it uses completely different model, there is no ControlPaint.DrawTab() method or something like that, and i need to figure out what rectangle types i need to draw so it will look like a real tab. that`s annoying.
The built-in controls, including the Tab control, already have this functionality of drawing themselves with or without visual styles. Why doesn`t microsoft exposing this functionality for the custom control creators? Why are custom control creators should suffer?
It's a pain unfortunately, but that is the cost for writing custom controls. The way I have seen Microsoft do this in many of the WinForm controls, is to check Application.RenderWithVisualStyes, and Control.UseVisualStyleBackColor. Depending on those values they will paint the control accordingly.
A common pattern they use is to create internal classes called MyControlRenderer.cs. Inside this renderer is where the magic actually happens. If you look at the NET REF code, you will see that they also use VisualStyleRenderer class from System.Windows.Forms.VisualStyles namespace, and there is some actual paint code as well.
You will need to utilize a mix of these various classes and tools, and a mix of also doing your own work. Testing your control on a machine with, and without visual styles.
When I hope home from work I will post a bit more.
Related
I would like to create a work flow with some custom controls and control lines. For the same i want to create my own editor to edit / Create work flow.
Can some one suggest where i can start / provide some references to start.
Thanks.
The question is too broad to give it a good and simple answer without writing a book. My advice is to split your project into sub tasks:
Create a control that e.g. looks like a box that shows some editable information (e.g. name)
Create a canvas area and place the control on it
Add Drag&Drop to the control so the user can drag it across the
canvas area
Add a second control and draw a line between them.
Create an UI to add an arbitrary number of controls to the canvas (e.g. via Drag&Drop)
Add commands to the control that represent the action (could use
ICommand)
Create a workflow manager that interprets and executes the commands
in the defined order
Extend the editor e.g. to enable the user to reconnect the lines or
to add rules and priorities to the control or even to choose a set of commands from a pool and assign them to the control
Make everything look nice
Now that you have separate tasks, you can focus on each and research them individually. Step by step. Your questions therefore become more precise and easier to answer (for yourself and others).
Why re-invent the wheel?
You could re host the windows workflow designer.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/framework/windows-workflow-foundation/samples/designer-rehosting
I've seen other articles talk about this in more detail but I couldn't immediately find them and you could of course just search yourself.
There is a huge amount of functionality in that thing which would take you forever to replicate.
I'm making C# windows application ("Windows Forms Application") with default components, but I need to change default look of the form and all items on it (buttons, etc.) from classic windows style, to custom. How can I achieve it?
For example make buttons round, add transparency to some objects, make other objects with different shape, and so on.
It doesn't have to be customizable, but I just need to change it from default to something else. Maybe there's some components or something else that I can use? Or maybe there's additional GUI library that I can download and add to the project?
You didn't provide us with many details on how you want to customize the form.
You can change colors used on the form by setting the BackColor and ForeColor properties.
You can also apply background image to the form and use the TransparencyKey property in order to create a form with an irregular shape. More information about this method can be found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/6k15y9et.aspx
Doing this manually and trying to have something looking nice takes waaay too much time. For start, look at this thread:
Best Free Controls for .NET
Im currently trying to create an application that will require 10+ different "pages" with different content and controls, and i need to switch back and forth between them on particular events.
What ive been doing, is just creating all the different sections in grids, and setting their visibility to collapsed, and then when i need to show them, just switch out the visible grid to the new one.
This has several drawbacks, im assuming its very poor from a coding standpoint, and this pretty much dis-allows me from using the designer at all. (i have no idea what performance implications it has, either)
on top of that, every time i switch to the new page, i need to reset all the components (textbox's etc) to their default states, as they dont get reset by becoming invisible :P
on to my question: i need a way to map out all the different pages, provide visually attractive transitions between them, and be able to use a designer to create them (and i dont mean designing it somewhere and then just copying the xaml)
I had looked around, and ran into SketchFlow and it seemed like the perfect solution, i could fade between pages and map everything on a flow chart easily, and then i realized it was only for app prototypes and i couldnt actually compile it as a normal application... and i needed to inherit from a custom Window class aswell.
is there something out there that allows me to do this? or how can i code this to work properly?
note: this ABSOLUTELY needs to stay within one window. i cant venture out into having 10+ different windows that pop up every time i need to change to something. as this happens very frequently
Split the separate sections in individual user controls. This would allow you to design each of them easily. Then on your form use code to create and load a new instance of particular user control that represents the section you need to show, and when transitioning, load the new section and unload the current. this would allow your form to stay relatively lightweight.
An alternative is to create a navigation application and split your sections into separate XAML view and use the standard navigation service to switch between them.
WPF Navigation Overview
Creating Navigation Applications video tutorial
You might wanna convert your "Pages" to usercontrols and use some transitions like mentioned in the below link to switch between controls
http://www.tanguay.info/web/index.php?pg=codeExamples&id=280
for more on using transitions look here
http://www.japf.fr/2009/04/adding-transitions-to-a-mvvm-based-dialog/
or
http://www.japf.fr/2008/07/8/comment-page-1/
For a OSS project, I'm trying to add controls programmatically to a WinForms view.. and I want to make these editable and resizeable as in the Visual Studio Designer. I've been playing around with adding programmatically, using Controls.Add(label).. but I'm struggling to work out how to make the UI editable.
I'm assuming it would make use of DesignMode - but I can only find getters and not setters for these properties. Simply put - is there any way of enabling and disabling DesignMode in WinForms programmatically?
I'm yet to investigate WPF - perhaps that would be able to have editable controls?
Many thanks, sorry to be a pain right after christmas..
T
Actually there is a way to make UI editable as in VS designer.You have to host the winforms designer on your form.
this info might help:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163634.aspx
It is available in WinForm as explained by alexm. Unfortunately this is not true for the WPF designer. There you would have to implement your own designer.
As far as I know, the Designer functionality is implemented in Visual Studio, and is not part of the WinForms runtime libraries. The DesignMode property is read-only because it gives information about the execution context; this is not something that can be changed on the fly (as a side note: this property is not as easy to use as one would hope).
If you want to make the UI editable at runtime (i.e. changing the size/layout of controls), you would have to implement a lot of the behavior manually (e.g. OnMouseDown handlers, etc.). If you wanted to do things like drawing bounding boxes with grabbable corners, you might need to delve into custom drawing.
I'm not sure about WPF, as I have much less experience with it, but this question on SO has some information about making controls resizable at runtime.
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.