Do you know if the default unit for WPF really is in pixels? I am seeing big differences in an HTML Page and an identical WPF page I made. My HTML page has font-size set to 16 pixels. The WPF page from my developers has its font size set to 16 (the unit set is "default"). But the font renders bigger. Everything is rendered bigger and larger.
I snooped a text item and the font size reads 16.8033333333333.
The MSN documentation says WPF uses pixels as the default unit; so, I should be safe to see a WPF window render text at the same size in pixels as it would in an identical HTML page, right? No.
Has anyone encountered this? I am using a fixed windows width for my WPF at 1600px wide, so the window should not be scaling its vectors.
WPF measures in Device-Independent Pixels.
Related
I've done desktop application's GUI for minimum 800x600 pixels. But now I need to make it look good when maximised in any screen size. There is so little to show, I don't know how to adjust the elements in big screen.
Now in 800x600:
Maximised in 1366x768:
I tried to make them bigger with screen size, but that give them kinda ugly, unsophisticated look. What should I do?
You need to use WPF Grid Layout to position your control. It will stretch the size of your control based on the defined layout.
You can read a tutorial here https://www.wpftutorial.net/GridLayout.html
You can use Uniform grid in that case
http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/uploadfile/raj1979/uniformgrid-in-wpf/
My form looks gorgeous (YMMV) at design-time:
...but gets "stretchy" vertically when running on the device and, in fact, is a little too tall for the screen:
Why would this happen, and how can I prevent it from happening?
Possibly noteworthy: Form's WindowState == Normal, FormBorderStyle = FixedDialog
please check your form settings: AutoScaleMode and Size settings.
Is this your first Windows CE application? You have to keep in mind that there are devices with different resolutions (ie QVGA, square like 320x320 pixels, etc), so you should adjust your layout to the screen size. Or make your form maximized and set AutoScroll to enbaled (if the content does not fit).
When you design your form, you are using pixel counts. These are transformed to twips (1/1440dpi) and again transformed (on the device) back to pixels (including a correction for the resolution, the dots-per-inch (dpi)). So a form with 240x240 pixels will have adifferent size on a 96dpi and a 102dpi display. This scaling is controlled by AutoScaleMode.
How can i scale a Form with font in WPF?
i.e. What is the WPF equivalent of
this.Font = SystemFonts.IconTitleFont;
In WinForms, if you're a good developer, you honor the user's font preferences. A WinForm that starts out as:
You then apply the user's font preferences:
this.Font = new Font("Segoe Print", 11, GraphicsUnit.Point);
and elements on the form scale to accommodate the new size:
Notice:
the form is wider and taller
the label is positioned further down, and to the right
the label is wider and taller
the text of the label is not cut off on the right or on the bottom edge
the button is wider and taller
but button is positioned further down, and to the right
Note: In WinForms you can also use the line:
this.Font = SystemFonts.IconTitleFont;
WPF doesn't support Font, which is why i provided the clearer alternative. For the example below.
A similar WPF form starts out as:
You then apply the user's font preferences with:
this.FontFamily = new FontFamily("Segoe Print");
this.FontSize = 14.666; //11pt = 14.66
and elements on the form don't scale to accommodate the new size:
Notice:
the label's position has not changed
the button's position has not changed
the form is not wider or taller (text is cut off)
the label is not any wider (text is cut off on the right)
the label is not any taller (cutting off text along the bottom edge)
the button is not any wider (text is cut off)
Here is another example of two buttons that are the same size:
WinForms:
Windows Presentation Foundation:
Bonus Reading
WPF: How to specify units in Dialog Units?
How to prevent WPF from scaling with the Windows font size options?
WPF version of .ScaleControl?
WPF doesn't do primitive font-based scaling because it's... well, primitive. You can see it in your own screenshots.
Here's your "WinForms, before changing font" screenshot. Take a look at how much space there is between "sat on a log." and the right edge of the form.
And here's your "WinForms, after changing font" screenshot. Notice how much less margin you have after "scaling".
If you hadn't left all that extra space, then your label would be cut off with the new font. And with some fonts, it would be cut off even though you did leave all that extra space. That's what I mean when I say WinForms' scaling is "primitive". WinForms picks a single scale to apply to everything, and that scale is not chosen with any awareness of your content; it's based on average statistics for the font, which can and will fall apart once you start talking about specifics.
WPF doesn't hobble you with something that primitive. It gives you an amazingly powerful layout system, where it would be trivial to make a window that scales beautifully. But instead, you're choosing to cripple that layout system by using hard-coded sizes. Stop it.
Hard-coded sizes have two huge problems:
They don't adapt to different fonts. You've noticed this already.
They don't adapt to different content. (What happens when you want to make a German version of your app, and the German text doesn't fit into your hard-coded button size?)
Hard-coded sizes just don't adapt. To anything. You had to use them in WinForms because that's all WinForms supported. But WPF gives you a proper layout system, so you don't have to (and shouldn't) use anything that crude.
All you need is this:
A Window with SizeToContent="WidthAndHeight". That way, the window will be exactly the right size to accommodate the text and button, no matter what font or language you use.
Since you only have two UI elements, and one is above the other, you would put a StackPanel inside your Window.
Inside the StackPanel, you need:
A Label or TextBlock to show your text, with the text in Content (Label) or Text (TextBlock); and
A Button with HorizontalAlignment="Right", and the text in Content.
Set some Margins on the StackPanel, TextBlock, and Button to space things out to your liking.
That's it. Don't set any other properties on anything -- especially not Width or Height.
Now, if you change your font, the window and the button will still be exactly the right size, and won't cut off your text. If you localize your app into a different language, the window and the button will be exactly the right size, and won't cut off your text. Stop fighting WPF, and it will give you great results.
If you later want to make your layout more advanced, you could consider things like:
If you want the button to be a little wider (to have more breathing room before and after the text), try playing with the Padding, or set a MinWidth and MinHeight. (Don't use Width or Height if your button contains text. You might consider using them if your button only contains an image, but maybe not even then.)
If you're worried that the font might make the window so large that it no longer fits on the user's screen, and want to enable word-wrapping, then play around with MaxWidth and TextWrapping.
WPF's layout system is amazingly powerful. Learn it. Don't fight it by using hard-coded layouts and then complaining that your hard-coded layouts suck.
Ok .. so here's the scenario. I've got a WP7 silverlight app, that loads an image from the net. Now, these images will be taken from mobile devices, so they may be in portrait or landscape mode. Certainly not a square.
Is there any way to maintain the aspect ratio when I show these in a silverlight <Image> control?
I'm ok with either of two resolutions:
That the image shows up in its correct aspect ratio within a predefined box that I've defined in xaml
Or that the image is cropped into the square
The way silverlight was built, you can set the width OR the height on the image, it will automatically max out whatever property you set and calculates the other side of the image so that it keeps the aspect-ratio.
So, just set a width on the image and center or right,left,top,bottom align it. (do not stretch it).
My developer's box has a screen resolution of 1680 x 1050. I'm developing a full-screen Silverlight 3 application that I'm considering deploying to the Internet. So, I want to make sure the application looks good on a variety of screen resolutions. I just started testing on other boxes, the first one having a screen resolution of 1024 x 768. During the test I found some of the pages on the application were partially truncated. It seems the controls on the page didn't adjust for the lower screen resolution. So, I'm looking for some tips on how to make a Silverlight application, to the extent possible, adjust for screen resolution. For example, are there things one should or should not do on XAML to make adapting to screen resolution easier? Should I just optimize for a minimum screen resolution? Your thoughts and suggestions are welcomed.
You can easily enforce a minimum acceptable resolution by setting the MinHeight and MinWidth properties of your root visual. (Of course, this should be less than the minimum screen resolution to account for browser chrome.)
Try to specify absolute Width and Height only when necessary: for example, for images or icons of fixed dimensions, or for obvious cases like TextBoxes (whose width should reflect the average length of the data entered).
Grid panels are excellent for mixing scalable and fixed layout areas. The star sizing specification takes a bit of getting used to--it's not as simple as a percentage-based proportioning--but it's much more flexible, especially in combination with row/column min/max dimensions.
You don't really need to test on multiple resolutions unless you're interested in testing a range of dots per inch--just resize the browser to approximate different screens. Since there's always a bit of give and take depending on the user's browser configuration, you'll have to account for some variance anyway.
You can make your application scale with the Silverlight Toolkit ViewBox or make it strech with layout controls like the Grid, StackPanel, and WrapPanel. Make your main UserControl have a Width and Height of Auto (or remove the width and height entirely) and the size of the app will resize to the size of the parent div (the default HTML template uses 100%x100%). Then just resize the browser accordingly. IE8 has developer tools that can help you see your app resized to specific screen resolutions.
Testing on a variety of screen resolutions is always a good idea.
I covered the resizing of elements and making it resolution independent on another thread.
You can have a look here, there are multiple ways to sizing and resizing things automatically.