Hello There,
We had bought Infragistics SSResizer control back in 2003 for Vb. I was wondering if I can use it for C#.
My application changes its font size when you change the resolution which ultimately messes up the application. Any other solutions are appreciable.
The SSResizer is a COM control built for use in Visual Basic and was never tested in any .NET environment so it isn't known whether this will work or not. The recommendation is to replace the COM control with a .NET control and use that going forward.
Related
I'm hoping someone here can explain to me the difference between WPF and XAML exactly in this context:
I have an application (an XBAP specifically) written in VB.NET using MVVM & Repository Pattern, implementing the the usual INotifyPropertyChanged, OLEDB etc etc.
The front end of the application is written in XAML.
From what I understand there is nothing specifically "WPF" about this application. In my view its XAML + VB.NET; where does the WPF come in? Given windows 8 and the "death of Silverlight/WPF" that I keep hearing about, what should I be doing to "upgrade" my application to ensure its future?
I would greatly appreciate someone clearing up this confusion for me.
XAML + your code behind is WPF. You are using WPF. XAML is the markup used for defining the interface in WPF.
And I wouldn't worry too much at this point about "the death of Silverlight/WPF". Just because Windows 8 supports HTML5/JavaScript doesn't mean WPF has gone away. At least, not yet.
See also.
An XBAP (XAML Browser Application) is a kind of WPF XAML application, that runs in the browser. Nothing more, nothing less.
WPF isn't going away anytime soon; in fact, it received a number of enhancements in .NET 4.5. Windows 8 will continue supporting WPF whether it's run on the desktop or as an XBAP. There's no need to "upgrade" your app, but if you want to take advantage of the Windows Store and the new user interface, it's not difficult to port your WPF XAML to WinRT XAML.
See, WPF can be called as the Successor of WinForms . In WPF WE have this XAML that is simply XML but Is more powerful and has greater properties .
WPF isn't dead !
Talking about Windows Store Apps, Silverlight has lots to do with WPF and XAML
Your XBAP application uses WPF : XAML for the UI and VB.NET for the code behind.
If you want to be sure, check if the namespaces you use in the code begin with "System.Windows".
Your XBAP is just a kind of project you can create with the WPF technology. (that's an application which shows several web pages as its UI).
Background:
One of the most attactive feature of Silverlight is PlanProjection because of its ease of use and the stunning effect. Unfortunatelly, it is not available in WPF. I know that similar effects can be achieved using Viewport3D but certainly not with that simplicity.
The App:
I would like to build a Win app designed for dualscreen computer, a bit similar to PowerPoint: 1 fullscreen viewer window for the audience, and 1 regular window to control the app.
The problem:
Building the app in SL is not very appealing: Going to fullscreen always requires user confirmation due to (understandable) security reasons. Detecting primary/secondary screens, their positions is only possible with System.Windows.Forms.Screen class (pls, correct me if I am wrong), which is not available in SL.
The odd solution:
Would it be possible to write my controls in SL utilizing the fancy and simple PlanProjection features and reuse them within a WPF application?
If yes, what impact will I have on the installer? I assume that the installer would need to deploy both .NET framework and SL runtime.
Do you have alternative ideas to facilitate cherry-picking features from the two different worlds?
WPF has rich 3-D capabilities that are far greater than what Silverlight 4 can do so if PlanProjection is the main feature from SL that you require but want to create a desktop application then using WPF all the way would be the way to go. WPF can do everything that PlanProjection can do. Charles Petzold wrote an excellent book on WPF 3-D.
Just use Planerator : http://blogs.msdn.com/b/greg_schechter/archive/2007/10/26/enter-the-planerator-dead-simple-3d-in-wpf-with-a-stupid-name.aspx
What are my options for interacting with a COM control from silverlight?
In my particular project, I have a legacy ActiveX authentication control which I would like to leverage in my silverlight application. Without too many boring details, the control takes a couple of parameters, prompts the user for credentials or tokens, and raises events. I need to set the parameters from my control, and somehow get the events' data to my control.
Furthermore, I would like to get the UI to seem as homogeneous as possible.
What are the best ways of doing this?
Silverlight 4 Beta was announced to have COM Interop for Trusted Applications.
More information on the Tim Heuer blog: http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2009/11/18/whats-new-in-silverlight-4-complete-guide-new-features.aspx#com
IIRC, Silverlight doesn't provide any way work with COM directly - there's no P/Invoke nor COM Interop - and the sandbox wouldn't allow you to do that in any case. However, you could host ActiveX control in the browser alongside your Silverlight application (which obviously restricts this to IE only), and then write some in-browser JavaScript glue to work with it - JavaScript can interact with both ActiveX and Silverlight.
I don't think you can reasonably host an ActiveX control inside your Silverlight application, however. The closest you can do is as described above, but position ActiveX control (in browser DOM) on top if Silverlight canvas in the right spot, so it looks like a single UI. Not sure if this will not produce any rendering artifacts, however.
Can we host a VB6.0 user control in WPF forms?
VB6 user controls are ActiveX
Walkthrough: Hosting an ActiveX Control in Windows Presentation Foundation
Maybe, maybe not. .NET can handle COM/ActiveX controls so there should be a way to do this.
But you would include non-managed code to your project. Not only would this make your code a lot less reliable, it also would make the installation much more complex. In general, it's not worth the trouble.
I just installed visio, and the installer almost seemed like it was built in flash.
The buttons kinda glowed when I hovered over them, and when I clicked on 'continue' the form phased out in a cool way.
I'm assuming it was built in WPF.
Anyhow, so are WPF more flash-like (visually speaking).
Do they have new properties where you can make forms phase out nicely/smoothly compared to winforms?
Disclaimer: I work for Microsoft. However, I don't work on Visio, WPF, CLR or Silverlight team. So, the following is my personal take on these technologies. If you want to quote me, don't do it implying it's the official Microsoft position. :-))
Update: Anything I say below about Flash/Flex/AIR might be wrong, as I have not worked with these technologies and what I know about them is based on what I read on the intertubes. :-) If you notice anything wrong, just shout in the comment and I'll correct it.
To the best of my knowledge, the Visio installer is not built with WPF. It's all unmanaged code; it's just people took a lot of care to make it really polished.
WPF is the new UI platform for building standalone applications for the Windows OS. It supports a declarative UI language - XAML, and related CLR types to program against. WPF is a different platform than WinForms, although it is possible to build applications that mix UI built with both. WPF supports a lot of things that WinForms does not, like bitmap effects, animations, control styling and so on and exposes them both in XAML or through code. Also, WPF relies heavily on vector graphics, as opposed to the pixel graphics in WinForms. In short, WPF is quite powerfull and allows building very snazzy UI. (Don't take my word for it, though, as I am biased; go check around for what people are saying about it or buiding with it. :-))
WPF and WinForms do not compete with Flash/Flex. WPF and WinForms are both UI frameworks for building standalone client applications. As far as I know, Flash/Flex are frameworks for building rich internet applications - RIA (though lately people started interpreting this abbreviation as rich interactive applications).
Adobe did come up with AIR about half a year (or maybe a year) ago, which allows building standalone client applications, so you could say that Adobe is trying to position Flash/Flex/AIR to compete with WPF. Of course, that's my take on it and I doubt Adobe's official positiong is anything like that.
If you want to compare particular MS technnologies with Flash/Flex, take a look at Silverlight - it's the MS RIA platform.
Silverlight is related to WPF in the sense that they share XAML and the corresponding CLR types. Silverlight supports only a subset of what WPF offers, though, as it is not targeting Windows OS only and thus is limited by the fact that it has to be portable.
Quick update to reflect the changes in the year since I've written the answer :-)
With Silverlight 3 shipped, SL and WPF are getting even closer and sharing bigger set of supported features. In addition, most of the new XAML controls are built for platform at the same time. Thus, SL/WPF are getting to a point of singularity...
Also, SL 3 supports out-of-browser applications. In that sense, SL is not only starting to compete with Flash/Flex, but it is also encroaching on AIR's turf.
And no, I still don't work on the WPF or Silverlight team. :-)
WPF is being used as a replacement for WinForms, and as a competitor to Flash in the form of Silverlight. WPF consists of an entirely new object model that sits on top of DirectX (at least the desktop version). You can create WPF windows, controls, etc, entirely using C# or another .Net language just like you can render WinForms. However, Microsoft has also created a markup language called XAML (eXensible Application Markup Language). Nodes in an XAML document (XML) map to objects in a similar fashion to the way ASP.Net maps to web controls. XAML typically exists in a .Net project alongside a code-behind style C# file (or VB.Net or whatever). The C# file interacts with the objects generated by the XAML. This is fairly consistent with the "graphics via markup, logic via code" model that Microsoft and others are pushing.
One of the overlooked features when discussing WPF is the completely awesome data-binding that Microsoft wrote for WPF. The new data binding framework is a quantum leap beyond Windows Forms 2.0 data-binding. Microsoft added a couple of new interfaces that make it much easier to make an object or collection emit data-biding events properly. They also provided a very rich set of data-binding classes. You can bind anything to just about anything else. You can bind one-way data to control, control to data, two-way control to data and back, control to control, etc.
Back on the graphics side of the house, WPF makes it fairly easy to make an existing control look like anything. WP lets you compose your own template for what a class of buttons should look like, or one button, or all buttons. Or radio buttons. Or labels. You get my drift. Imagine if CSS included the ability to define what an input button would look like using other HTML controls.
They also provide a number of layout controls. You can continue to use exact positioning like in WinForms, or you can leverage of variety of techniques to make your window act more like a web page that grows and shrinks with resizing, etc.
The downsides: It is too easy to create spectacular effects that crawl on slower machines. Some of the graphics do not take advantage of hardware of graphics cards, though Microsoft has incrementally improved support for this. I believe when 3.0 first came out drop shadows were rendered purely using software. I think 3.5 or 3.5 SP1 changed it so that WPF would utilize graphics hardware for the task. Microsoft has said they will continue to enhance WPF in this fashion.
WPF is .Net 3.0 and above, which runs on XP SP2, Vista, and Servers 03 & 08. So don't plan on deploying WPF to a customer with Win2k desktops.
Summary: If you are doing desktop programming in .Net, you should be doing it in WPF unless you are targeting Win2k. You can avoid the downsides of WPF, and there are many upsides. Microsoft will probably throw away WinForms in some future release, or at very least you will stop seeing new features, etc.
As far as Silverlight goes, the betas for SL 2.0 look good. I think that Silverlight will require some wide-spread adoption. Microsoft has already tried to get this going. The NBC Olypmics site used Silverlight, and Major League Baseball uses it for its MLB.tv product. As soon as Silverlight gets a good install base I think you will see the Microsoft side of the development world starting swinging away from Flash and to Silverlight.
Edit after using Silverlight 3 and MVVM:
I have moved away from WPF and am doing a lot of Silverlight 3 development. But I think my comments here will still apply to the WPF developer.
I have been using the MVVM pattern in my app (think MVC with a twist). The Microsoft Patterns and Practices team has released a set of libraries known as Prism that supports various aspects of MVVM. There are WPF and Silverlight versions. Take a look at MVVM and Prism if you are going to be doing WPF or Silverlight development.
You can do a lot of flash w/ Winforms, or with custom components. But if you want out-of-the-box bang-whizz availability, WPF is the way to go.
Yeah, I think the intention is to be flash-like, it seems to me that MS has set its sights on taking down Adobe.
The way I see it: WPF is to Flash as WinForms is to Flex. WPF has more emphasis on vectors and states than on programming.