Custom control box button - c#

Some Windows applications add buttons to the control box, which apparently is the name for the group of minimize, maximize, and close buttons. One such application is Skype, which has a button for switching from a one-window-that-contains-everything mode to a one-window-per-conversation mode and vice versa:
I'd like to know how you can do this. I've looked around and can't figure out how. I assume it would require P/Invoke and the Windows API, but I'm not sure what function I'd use.

I think one of these might be what you're looking for:
http://www.codeproject.com/kb/vb/transmenuandtitlebuttons.aspx
http://www.codeproject.com/kb/cs/mintraybtn.aspx

Related

wp8 cant find a built-in options menu

Does anybody know if this control comes with the windows phone 8 SDK or if I must program it?
This screen appears when I go to people => click + icon. There are many very similar screens in windows phone but I don't know if they're ready controls or custom ones.
What I need is a screen that hides all background and just shows a list of options upon clicking a certain button, and I want to handle application overflow depending on the option the user chose.
Any ideas?
You can use the CustomMessageBox from toolkit http://phone.codeplex.com
it takes a Content that can be a listbox or user control.
and you can make it take the full screen.
check this: http://shawnoster.com/2012/10/welcome-custommessagebox-to-the-windows-phone-toolkit/
and this: https://stackoverflow.com/a/15944006/1423885

Virtual Keyboard Customization

Windows 7 and 8 have a virtual keyboard. (Actually, 2 of them, but I'm talking not about an 'On Screen Keyboard' from 'Ease of Access', but a virtual keyboard for Touch and Pen input devices). I've noticed that only Internet Explorer can customize it by changing or adding some buttons, like ".com", ".net" to speedup typing. Only when address box activated.
I'm wonder weather I can add my own buttons for particular controls of my application (C#, WPF), e.g. 'Create New Item' or 'Link'.
Please, do not suggest shortcuts, since it requires 2 buttons (I have kind of text box for typing by default and I cannot use single buttons as shortcut, and shortcuts much less obvious and easy-to-learn than a button clearly describing it function).
You can not add buttons to the virtual keyboard. See this MSDN social page and this SO post.
Use the TextBox.InputScope property to enable the extra buttons. You cannot make your own.

Aero border and other controls in a TrayIcon menu

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.

Closing Windows Forms on a Touchscreen

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.

How can I create a button with an embedded close button

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.

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