Visually edit C# imagemap control? - c#

I just discovered the imagemap control in Visual Studio 2008.
I'm familiar with the imagemap concept from HTML, I'm just used to having editors that allow you to select areas visually, like drawing a hotspot on the image itself, and the software generates the HTML itself.
But I can't do that in Visual Studio, and I have about 20 different circular hotspots to create.. also I have no idea on how to easily detect coordinates (X & Y).
Any tips? Advice? Ideas?
Added in edit - Also, is there a way to add code to each hotspot in an imagemap?

No, AFAIK there is no designer support for hotspots - I use a piece of paper.
Concerning the code, you'll have to set HotSpotMode="PostBack" PostBackValue="HS1" for each hotspot and use a switch statement in ImageMap1_Click to react to the different Postback values.

You can capture mouse clicks on the imagemap using jQuery, then pass the x, y coordinates of mouseposition to textbox. At the end you can add captured areas to your imagemap.

Related

How to get back Visual Studio's old way of alerting of suggestions by darkening code instead of by 3 dots?

Visual Studio used to alert us of unused variables by darkening them. Now (version 16.10.2) it fills the code with three dots everywhere, which look a little like code and are more confusing.
Is there a way to get the old way back?
There is a color control for the ellipses called "Suggestion Ellipses...". You could set the foreground color of it to the same color as your editors background to get a sense that its turned off. You'll still see it when you select the item though like so:
Version 16.10.3 now
It looks like they changed it back.
So if you still have it - update VS.

Get HTML display area (viewport) offset to 0/0 and zoom of IE window using .NET/C# and SHDocVw.InternetExplorer

THIS IS NOT A HTML / JAVASCRIPT / CSS question!
Check out these images:
I need to get the HTML display area (aka viewport) offset to the 0/0 of the IE window.
I am targeting Microsoft Internet Explorer 11.
I am using C# with SHDocVw.InternetExplorer library to access/control the IE.
What I actually want to do is to trigger double-click events
similar to IHTMLElement.click(), just a doubleClick()
calling IHTMLElement.click() multiple times does not work
I tried to solve it WITHOUT actually clicking:
How to make SHDocVw.InternetExplorer fire events that get caught with JS addEventListener?
but that has not received any answers yet
So right now I'm controlling the mouse to trigger certain events, calling [DllImport("user32.dll")] public static extern bool GetCursorPos(out PointInter lpPoint); and the like to get and set the mouse cursor and to simulate double-clicks on certain elements.
For the mouse navigation I already take into consideration
the OS's desktop zoom/scale setting
the IE window Left and Top properties
the location of the IHTMLElement(3).getClientBoundingRect, i.e. the position of the element I wanna trigger
This all works perfectly fine when the IE configuration is the same. My assumptions:
same HTML viewport offset (same toolbars, menus etc)
HTML viewport scaling 100% (no page zooming)
But those two factors are dynamic, so I have to account for them in some way.
So what I need is:
The HTML viewport's vertical offset (in both screenshots it's 106 pixels)
The HTML viewport's horizontal offset (in first its 1, in second it's 291)
The HTML viewport's zoom factor (in both screenshots 100%)
I have tried accessing multiple elements in the ShDocVw.InternetExplorer object, but I either have the wrong interface casts or it does not expose this information willingly, because I could not find it yet.
From a delve into the google world I also came up empty, so no (obvious) answers there either.
So does any one of you know how to deal with this problem? Some obscure COM/OLE incantations and rituals that could guide the mouse cursor on its way?
EDIT:
Dirty solution: I could display some homemade HTML/JS page first, that detects my simulated mouse movement and dump that information into some (invisible) div, then read that data in C#.
Though this is a solution, it's quite ugly and not useful for taking into account layout/display changes that might occur during later runtime, if user changes zooms while the app is working.

How to render dynamic data in a custom WPF control, such as a line graph?

I'm working on a LineGraph control which consists many DependencyProperties that affect how the control should display its data. For example, the control contains the following properties to affect its axes:
AxisStroke - Color of the axes.
AxisThickness - Stroke thickness of the axes.
It also contains properties for display numbers & tick marks
VerticalTicks - True/False to indicate whether or not ticks appear along the vertical axis
HorizontalTicks - True/False to indicate whether or not ticks appear along the horizontal axis
VerticalMin - Minimum value on the vertical axis (numeric)
VerticalStep - The distance in between each vertical tick
VerticalMax - Maximum value on the vertical axis (numeric)
HorizontalMin - Minimum value on the horizontal axis (numeric)
HorizontalStep - The distance in between each horizontal tick
HorizontalMax - Maximum value on the horizontal axis (numeric)
And many more properties exist to allow for different line styles on a single graph (LineColor, LineThickness, DataPointShape, and DataPointIcon to name a few).
My goal is to be able to call out my LineGraph in XAML to insert it into a Window. I would like to be able to specify each of these settings inside the XAML as well, and see the new rendered image of the control in the WPF designer.
Now, given there is a lot of geometric shapes to render on the LineGraph, I though using a Canvas would be a good choice to render the data. Unfortunately, when I'm working in XAML, I cannot perform computations for the locations of shapes based on the control's width & height.
And yes, the shapes' locations must be computed because the data points for the graph are dynamic and the tick-related information is dynamic. Not to mention, I would like to display the actual values along each axis of the LineGraph.
So, I thought I might be able to display this control as if I was doing the rendering in C# code. Other windowing frameworks sometimes provide a Render method that can be used for laying out all of the sub-components.
Doing this, however, doesn't seem possible since WPF relies heavily on XAML for the visual appearance of controls. Also, requiring that the WPF designer must display the LineGraph based on the properties and data specified, it doesn't seem like C# code would solve the problem.
I suppose my questions are these:
How can I render data dynamically inside of a WPF control?
Am I able to specify in C# how my control is rendered, allowing the WPF designer to reflect it?
Side Note:
I've done quite a bit of research, but I am only finding information on how to implement more simple types of controls. If you know of any references that contain information on this topic, please feel free to post them in addition to your answers. I will be more than happy to learn how to do this completely.
EDIT:
I've created a graph using Excel to elaborate what the LineGraph control might look like if it has correct data and properties.
I will answer this based on my experience on implementing custom built graphing libraries in WIN32, WinForm, WPF, WinCE, WP8+WinRT, ....and even on a FPGA :)
It's extremely difficult to implement one from scratch. It may seem easy at first but you will run into a lot of "What should I do if this happens?". For example, in your above graph it seems you got a DataPoint # (5,100) it graphs it pretty well. But lets say, I add another DataPoint # (5.000000005, 0). How would you handle that in your code? Would you say that each pixel on the graph represents an exact value on the X-Axis, or does each pixel represent a range of X-Values?
I would recommend that you use an already establish library to do what you want to do unless you need something very specific like lets say you need horizontal cursors on the graph (think Tektronix Oscilloscope) and you need to calculate some values in between the two cursors.. then maybe you need to implement your own custom one or build on top of an open source one.
So, if you are still adamant of creating your own custom control here are answers to your questions.
How can I render data dynamically inside of a WPF control?
You can use a WriteableBitmap and create your own primitive drawing library from that. After you're done rendering, set it as the ImageSource of your control.
Or you can use WriteableBitmapEx which has GDI like drawing functions already implemented for you.
WriteableBitmapEx CodePlex Page, I also think you can just get it from NuGet as well.
You can also use a <Canvas> and add UI elements to that as well.
Am I able to specify in C# how my control is rendered, allowing the WPF designer to reflect it?
This depends on how you create your controls, but yes you can create Properties in your custom control that will appear in the Designer. Allowing you to change it thus updating the display. I would read a lot of tutorials about writing your own custom user control library. They can explain it better than I can in a SO answer. If you implement the properties correctly it should like so.....
Full Size Image: http://i.stack.imgur.com/pmevo.png
After changing the Number of Rows from 15 to 10 and the starting Y offset to -1 (thus moving the graph up and making the rows a lot taller)
Full Size Image: http://i.stack.imgur.com/0RKnA.png

printing solution for .NET front end, MYSQL backend

i will need to print an "x" according to the coordinates given to me from one of the tables in my database. im probably gonig to use c# to connect to mysql.
i will probably have a winform that is 8.5 x 11 inches (The size of a regular sheet of paper) and i will populate the entire thing with labels of "x" and they will be invisible.
each individual table record will have the coordinates of those labels which should NOT be invisible
the form for every record will show and will print. the printing will be on top of a paper that is actually a physical application itself.
the problem:
how to fill out a physical application using data from a mysql database. (dont tell me that i should be printing the entire app from scratch, the reason this is not possible is because the form is actually TRIPLE paper width (white, yellow, and pink copy), so i cannot print the entire app from scratch, i have to print on top of it.
the question: how do i print "x" at specified regions? is my solution the best way to go or is there a smarter approach?
in case you have no idea what i am talking about, here are some related questions:
ms-access: designing a report: printing text on specific x,y coordinates
Conditional formatting in Access
While labels would offer you the ability to make an X show up I don't feel that having a bunch of hidden labels is the best way.
Does the "application" represent some kind of form? Are you looking to "check-off" boxes using x's and then print this?
I may suggest using GDI+ (drawing) vs using labels.
Consider the following:
Locate the coordinates for your boxes. Then use the drawstring method within an overridden onPaint event-handler for your form or for the panel which may represent your form's canvas.
This article talks about GDI+ and how to draw text as graphics.
http://www.functionx.com/vb/gdi+/objects/fonts.htm

c# control location precision

I need more precision then integer based locations when puttng controls on a form.
It seems control.location only supports Point.
Is there a work around for this?
Point p = new Point(100, 200);
this.Location = p;// this works of course
PointF pF = new PointF(100.04f, 200.08f);
this.Location = pF;// this does not work of course because Location expects a Point not PointF
Is there some setting on the base form, or base control I can set to have more location precision?
You could use Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) together with XAML (both work nicely within Visual Studio), which allows subpixel positioning of controls.
However, assuming that you are using Windows Forms and not WPF, why would you ever need to put a control on a non-integer (subpixel) location?
Although GDI+ is capable of floating point coordinate systems, Win32 (upon which Winforms is based) is not. I second the reccomendation to move to WPF which has a ubiquitous floating point coordinate system based on device independent virtual pixels.
No, control rendering in WinForms is all fundamentally pixel-based. There is a way you could achieve sub-pixel positioning (without using WPF), but it would be work on your part, and I'm really not sure why you would need this anyway.
The gist of the approach is to create a user control with a hidden instance of the control you're trying place funkily (sub-pixelly, maybe). You wire up all the user control's events so that they pass through to the hidden control, and after each event is passed you call the hidden control's DrawToBitmap method to get a snapshot of the control. You then use Graphics.DrawImage to copy the snapshot to the surface of the user control. DrawImage is not restricted to pixels, so you can offset the drawing by less than a pixel to achieve the precise positioning you're looking for.
Warning: please do not actually do this, as there is no reason for it when you can just use WPF. This would be a lot of work, since "passing the control's events through" is not as simple matter as it sounds. There's also a problem with rendering the focus correctly in this manner, as the invisible control cannot be given the focus (I'm not even going to tell you what the grisly hack solution is to that problem).
Update: It's worth revisiting that decision about WPF - it is ideal for what you're doing and would make your life much simpler. I have been generally underwhelmed by WPF, because I think that while it's very powerful it is essentially overpowered for the uses to which it is most often put (namely, boring-ass business apps). In your case, though, it provides a granularity that you actually require in your app.
If you're stuck in WinForms, however, your best approach is to write your own UserControl versions of the text-editing controls that your application requires. At its core, a TextBox is just a square that you draw a border around and some text on. The .Net Graphics methods for this (DrawRectangle and DrawString) can have the drawing coordinates specified in floating point.
There are tons of StackOverflow questions about owner-drawn user controls and GDI+ graphics.
1 point is 1 pixel and therefore the maximum resolution required.
This is the reason why 0,0 maps to the left corner, and 1024 maps to the right, in a resolution of 1024x768

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