For a long time now, I have been stuck with Windows Forms development (started with VB6, and has continued through to C# .NET 4.5), and I have pretty much hit the limit of what Windows Forms can do, both using pure .NET, and special effects with Native Code.
I have tried to learn WPF and XAML, but I get stuck right at WPF's new designer. It really seems very difficult to use in comparison to the Windows Forms designer.
I want to know if there are any alternatives to .NET's WPF designer, that are more suited to Windows Forms developers?
I like to blog about beginner articles for WPF, and there are a few in particular that may help you out:
Understanding the change in mindset when switching from WinForms to WPF
What is this "DataContext" you speak of?
A Simple MVVM Example
To summarize, the biggest difference between Winforms and WPF is that in WPF your data layer (the DataContext) is your application, while in Winforms your UI layer is your application.
To look at it another way, with WPF your application consists of the objects you create, and you use Templates and other UI objects to tell WPF how to draw your application components.
That's the opposite of WinForms where you build your application out of UI objects, and then supply them with the data needed.
Because of this, the designer isn't actually used that much since your application components are designed in code, and the designer is only needed to draw a user-friendly interface that reflects your data classes (typically Models and ViewModels)
And personally, I prefer to type all my XAML out by hand since it's faster and doesn't make as much of a mess as the drag/drop WPF designer does, although I do use the Designer on occasion to preview what my UI will look like.
So to your answer your question about if there's other WPF designers suited for WinForms developers, I would suggest that instead of looking for another designer, instead look to learn how to use WPF in the way it's meant to be used. Using WPF like it's WinForms means you miss out on much of what makes it so great :)
Well although, some people don't agree, I would also recomment to not use the VS designer. At least not to create an interface. If you may want to get a first impression of your implementation without starting the application, it's a good viewer at least as long no sophisticated things like Styles and Templates are used. But, IMHO, its drag and drop result should only be used as prototype and therefore be discarded after it's no longer needed.
Here are some reasons which are important for me not to use it.
The VS designer is working with fix margins and alignments (which is usually not necessary, if you're using the layout controls), means you have to touch many controls, if the requirements are changed. If you're deep in XAML and the WPF mechanics you can create an applications which can be modified with small effort, regarding the look and feel.
Since the designer is generating the xaml, the composition is not optimal and the UI may perform badly. I didn't measure it, it's just a feeling.
A much better alternative is MS Blend, although the start is everything else but easy. Its drag and drop result is much better that the result of the VS designer.
But it's a pretty powerful tool, which helps you to use pretty powerful elements to create a state of the art UI. I recommend to visit at least a short workshop to get an idea of its opportunities.
Back to your question, IMHO, and I think many people agree, get yourself a good book e.g. WPF Unleashed and later, if you want to know more about the details, WPF Pro. There are a lot of features which are different to Winforms. You won't get to know them by using any designer. I think that's the best approach.
Please also consider that there are many frameworks and libraries (e.g. MVVM light, WPFToolkit) out there, which are already solving some common problems. So it's not necessary to reinvent the wheel.
I know this is an old question but for the benefit of anyone else looking at this, I think I should redress the balance a bit - reading some of the other answers, I get the feeling that some of the 'don't use the designer' sentiment comes from not using it properly.
This tutorial is quite good to get you going and answers some of the criticisms in the other posts.
For instance, you can switch from the Winforms-like margin-based layout that is the default when you drop a control, to a more WPF-ish style by right-clicking and selecting 'Reset Layout'
This video covers similar ground.
I still prefer the VS2010 designer on balance - VS2013 seems to be a bit buggy when dragging and dropping onto TabItems **, (which my current project uses a lot) - but the VS2013 Document Outline view lets you move things around in that view too, which can be a real plus.
Really, though, to get the most out of WPF and xaml you need to be reasonably fluent in both the designer view and the xaml view and switching between them; if you shy away from the designer, you are missing out on something that can help you a lot.
** Edit - although this seems to have been improved in Update 3 for VS 2013, and in previews of VS14, to date I still get odd behaviour at times.
First of all, in WPF (XAML) in Visual Studio deisgner, you should always use the xaml code to build you UI and do not drag and drop you control! You need to keep your code clean. You can use Expression Blend to help you, it's more graphic oriented with drag and drop, but it's not free.
It's not a big learning curve, but I think you should learn how to do your xaml by hand instead of searching for alternative.
I've been through this process as you did. Afterwards I was teaching everyone in my company WPF. There are a couple of important lessons I have learned and everybody I know who works with WPF.
If you are working with UI controls in the code behind, .... Then you are doing it wrong. There is absolutely no need for you to deal with UI controls in the code behind.
You do not need the visual developer for clicking on it. You are much more productive by only dealing with XAML.
Use Copy/Paste. Do not trust in your typing capabilities. It will save a lot of headaches.
Think of the XAML just as a window that loks over the data. In the code behind you are changing the data. In XAML you are defining how the UI will interpret the data.
Converters are amazing. As soon as you get a key amount of Converters, your productivity will rocket Sky high. They will take over the role of the crazy amount of control eventhandlers that hide or resize, or what ever about UI,
It makes UI development fun. Especially once you find out how it likes to play along with Asyc processes. It really takes away a lot of the headaches that were caused by Winforms.
Sorry for the dumb question but I'd like to know if an ownerdrawn control can be used in a WPF or silverlight application. I never heard of one though,
Thank you,.....
Actually the beauty of WPF is that every control is actually ownerdraw (in terms of Windows Forms development). You can do with the shape of controls whatever you want still remaining consistent in all functinality provided by him.
It's impossible in one answer to describe all potential WPF has, so I strongly suggest to find WPF documentation and read read read...
i am trying to research some gui technology for c# where i can display a tree view (opposed to the standard one provided.)
Essentially i want to have the gui draw a tree of data (as if you were going to draw a binary tree on a piece of paper or something) Then making each of the nodes clickable.
If this isnt available does anyone know of something where i could have a mindmap type GUI which shows links between elements and those are clickable?
I can guess people will say make one yourself, in which case i give up already ;) thats too advanced for me and as i am on a work placement i dont think i would be granted the time to make it as there are more pressing issues to get working first, like actually making the programme work!
Thank you
You can take a look at the controls in Kevin's WPF Bag-o-Tricks which has a WPF mind map style layout. Here is a nice example. If you want to use more professional components take a look at the product from Nevron Software, they have some great controls. There is also an opensource WPF graphing library - graphsharp (which I have no experience with, but I found a nice article by Sacha Barber). Since it's used in nDepend it must be pretty mature.
I hope you get some inspiration from those links :)
I also found XMind API for C#
https://xmindapi.codeplex.com/
It's free and looks easy to use.
im looking for some tips and hints how i can build up my Application in a good way.
So here are some informations: I have at the moment the Mainwindow designed with a grid which holds 4 frames. its looking like this.
At the top is a menu which let you select the different Pages. I have for the main area about 8 pages for e.g. a settings page and 4 content pages. The Sidebar displays some additional informations which can be choosen by the user and the bottom shows only a page when 1 of the content pages are opened.
So my content pages have ViewModels behind to fill them and im trying to use commands in the near future when im understand all features of them ;). So im trying to use the MVVM way, but im very new at this.
I don't really need a navigation menu like it is given from navigation windows.
So is it the best way for an application like that to use Frames or are there any better solutions?
Frames support the built-in navigation infrastructure of WPF so they're a good choice if you plan to use that. It does have some problems (at least some people think so, including me) but for simple/small applications it will do just fine. Of course they'll also work if you want to roll your own light-weight navigation system, like I usually do. I generally navigate by sending instances of ViewModels around and setting them as the contents of windows or content controls, and letting DataTemplates 'dress' them up as they are defined in the views. For larger projects I'd always recommend one of the awesome frameworks which include navigation systems like Prism or Magellan.
Basically it all depends on your requirements; there are a lot of ways to get it right. It's good that you're trying to use MVVM, try to stick with that and it will generally automatically guide you in a good direction.
I'd suggest using a docking library like AvalonDock to spice your application up a bit... however I have a bitter experience with it as it's not MVVM-friendly. I recently spent the better part of a week wrestling with it to make it usable enough in a MVVM scenario and I'm not sure it can ever be done. There may be other libraries that handle things better, but (full-featured, like in Visual Studio) docking is a complicated matter so maybe don't go there. Sorry, I probably felt the need to vent after the AvalonDock frustrations.
I was just wondering if there are ways of creating my own custom winforms controls?
I've been plundering with Visual Studio 2008 now trying to do some c# apps. And the GUI end up looking terrible because of the standard winforms limitations.
And I noticed that I can add images to buttons for example, but ther's no hover effect. Or, the hover effect makes the whole button area gray. I don't want any of that, I just want to either create my own graphics for the controls or find some free (opensource perhaps) controls that already exist.
Any light on any of this, anyone? :)
You can write complete Winforms controls from scratch, doing all the painting and input processing yourself - you just create a class derived from 'Control' and get on with it.
There's a fair bit to making a first-class control which integrates nicely with the VS designer, so people tend to derive their custom control from an existing control which has most of the behaviour they want.
Here would be a good place to start: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/6hws6h2t.aspx
I'm puzzled, you are doing WinForms development, yet in comments say you have done many months of WPF development, but WPF is not good enough because it is not cross platform.
How is WinForm more cross platform, and have you seen how ugly WinForms looks under mono on a Mac as it's draw via X11.
If you want style and cross platform, go for Flex or Silverlight, as your already know WPF I'd go the Silverlight route.
It's cross platform, and has all the beauty of WPF, but at the cost of reduced functionality out of the box.
First - may be more pragmatic to look at WPF, or hosting some WPF elements inside winforms (which is supported - like so). Other than that - you can do all your own painting if you want; but it is a lot of work.
Any reason why you don't use WPF? You have much more more UI control if you went down the route.
If you must go with WinForms then there are many commercial solutions like DevExpress. If you really want you own look and feel it'll be alot of work.
Yes. You can create your own controls. It is called a User Control. Just select Add->and User Control.
WPF is a good alternative if you want your windows form to look fancy.