I have seen this user interface in some screen shots of some RSS Readers. It is a multi-pane user interface. THere are three panels or "panes" to the window, in other words, the window is divided into three parts and the user is able to mouse over the division and click on the seperation bar and resize the section.
How is this sort of GUI developed in C#?
In WinForms, this is done with a SplitContainer. The Orientation property can be used to get vertical or horizontal splits. You can also nest splitcontainers to get multiple splits.
In WPF there is no SplitContainer, but the same effect can be achieved with a Grid and a GridSplitter.
Finally, note that "WPF or C#" is a false dichotomy. WPF and WinForms are just UI frameworks in the .NET framework. Both can be used with any .NET language, including C#, VB.NET, etcetera.
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I have just started getting into learning WPF, and to add controls to the window I just move them from the toolbox and onto the window. Then I can continue moving them to put them in the places I want. Now I have got into layouts/panels, stack panels, canvas,dock panels etc and I am struggling to understand why they are useful if you can just drag and move objects/controls on the screen yourself.
For example dock panels, using the dock property you can put the object on the left,right,bottom,top,lastchildfill. You can dock a textbox to the left by using the property, DockPanel.Dock = "Left", but why can't I just move it there myself?
First off, don't even waste time drag/dropping controls into a WPF app. By placing controls in this manner, you are severely limiting your design potential in WPF. Most serious WPF designers don't even bother dragging controls, they hand type all of the XAML. Arguably, this is how WPF was designed. Leveraging XAML allows your layouts to be totally dynamic in ways that WinForms could never dream of, but you have to hand code the XAML.
Do you see where this is going? Don't drag/drop controls when designing WPF apps! Every conference I've been to stresses this fact! Grid panels are a huge part of WPF layouts, and are crucial to getting your controls to end up where you expect.
The hardest part about learning WPF is figuring out it is not WinForms with nice graphics. It is a totally different beast, with a steep learning curve! Hand coding XAML is extremely tedious at first, but once you learn the names of all the controls and the important properties, you'll be cranking out UIs way faster than the old drag/drop method.
You can move the controls manually, but different layout panels can automatically handle controls positioning when You add new controls or when the window is resized.
Please take a look at description on MSDN and on CodeProject that describes different types of containers.
I would like to have a WPF (C# with .NET 4.0) application which displays 'panel' / windows. No problem so far with Grid and different rows/columns for each panel.
Now I would like to expand one panel to full screen (like Eclipse does for each view when double clicking). Is there a built-in solution in WPF or do I have to implement this behavior by myself?
Are there open source solutions for this feature? I could not find any.
I have a WPF application that loads a realtime live chart in a window,
But I end up having 10+ windows open on my desktop (as many windows as there are charts).
So my need is basically to group/embed all these WPF windows in a single window.
I tried WPF MDI but I had serious trouble since it requires the windows to be usercontrols instead, and in that case, my live chart displays but stays empty and does not refresh nor plots realtime data. Same behavior when I put my chart controls inside a Page instead of a Window (chart does not update). This is why I guess I really need to stick with windows at this point.
I welcome any simple & straight solution
Are you sure you want to have a last century MDI in your WPF application? I'd recommend to switch to other, less expensive and more flexible content arrangement. I'd organize the charts in some kind of scrollable or swipeable container, maybe with some kind of navigation or tabbing facility... If your users really want to have one or some charts in a separate window(s), let them drag the charts out of the main container and create separate window on demand (something like dragging a tab out of Interent Explorer).
I see that many applications do not have a title bar, but still have the window controls in the upper right corner. These are also styled differently than the normal windows form controls. Is it possible to achieve this effect in WPF?
Here are some examples:
Zune Desktop software:
http://i548.photobucket.com/albums/ii356/elpedrogrande/btns2.gif
Photoshop:
http://i548.photobucket.com/albums/ii356/elpedrogrande/btns3.gif
GoTo Assist:
http://i548.photobucket.com/albums/ii356/elpedrogrande/btns1.gif
They do this by setting the window style bits so it is created without a title bar. And then draw their own, making it look like a custom one. Which is the main reason that all these programs have caption glyphs that are not identical.
You'd accomplish the same in WPF by setting the WindowStyle to None. And a whole bunch of code to get back the behavior that Windows implements automatically with the title bar. Google "WM_NCHITTEST" to find out more.
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.