Well ... at the risk of sounding like I really don't know anything about programming, I have a question about controls in Silverlight 5.
I have an OOB App that I am working with, but I need to add the User Menus (File, Edit, etc.) that are normally seen at the top of all apps. There used to be a control in VS (the Menu control) that was easily configurable. What is the control used to create the User Menus in Silverlight 5? The Context Menu is not what I am asking about. That is the right mouse click menu ... so that's not the answer ...
Please, understand my problem. It's been since Silverlight 2 since I worked in Silverlight. I appreciate any information you kind folks would be willing to provide.
There is no such thing available directly from Microsoft (meaning it's neither built-in or present in the Silverlight Toolkit).
You will have to use third-party controls such as DevExpress or Telerik.
EDIT: Some more advice in response to your comment.
Another possibility is to create UIs from scratch. There are two forms of UIs that I found inspiring lately, both of which don't use any ribbons or drop-down menues at all. The first is to use "Windows 8"-like dashboards instead of traditional menues, the other is the Windows Azure Management Portal (a web application).
I don't use traditional UI frameworks for menues myself, but mostly because I don't like those approaches and I'm picky with how user interfaces should work and look like.
But obviously you have to make a serious time investment to go new ways. And it will heavily depend on your application what approach makes sense.
Here's one simple approach that could work in a number of cases, I used it for a database application (I call it the Windows-Phone-7/8 approach):
The screen is divided into the "page" area and information bars. The information bars contain no menues, just who's logged on, a back-button, a home-button, and context-sensitive buttons depending on what's in the view. So basically it behaves like a web browser and you navigate through the app by clicking on "links" (buttons that take you elsewhere).
There's only one page area, so no windows and no popups. I've gone to the extreme of making even dialog windows to be pages.
Now you need menues. You do that with "dashboards", ie. pages that present some overview stuff and buttons that lead to the other areas of your application.
Although you could have action buttons like save or delete on the page itself, I put them in the bottom bar (but they are still dependent on the page your on) - that is exactly how it works in Windows Phone 7/8.
One last advice: The real effort is usually not in the menus anyway. Beside your application logic itself, it's a lot of little things like login screen, error handling and how to present error messages (look at the windows azure management portal for how they did that really nicely) and gracefully failing on session timeout. There's also a lot of nuisance on how you manage your data (ria-services, etc.).
So as long as you don't need fancy data grid grouping, rich-text edit or excel-like pivot controls, a toolkit might not help you as much as you'd hope - because they give you only the controls, not the entire UI.
Related
We need to get rid of DevExpress Bootstrap Controls for ASP.NET Core from project.
What would be the easiest/cheapest/feastet solution?
To simply rewrite everything with a different framework like Angular/Vue/React?
Maybe there is a known framework/method of migrating to DevExpress ASP.NET Core Controls? Or to something else?
How many controls were used from DevExpress?
If you only used a few controls, then you only need a few replacements.
I would not call purchase of some controls from DevExpress a whole "framework", but that of only purchasing some controls to use with your project.
So, does the project use 3-5 or 50 of those DevExpress controls? (by using, I mean DIFFERENT kinds of controls).
If you only used a few, say like their GridView, then you would only need to find a replacement for their gridview control, or simply use the built-in one, and fancy it up with some css, and addtional options. (I would make a user control).
So, you want to determine what the controls used did, how many different controls were used, and then find some controls that have a great look and feel that you like.
Their grid controls are VERY nice, since they have some "really" nice filter options for the header of that grid control.
So, you need to find some control replacements, but how many did the project use will quite much determine scope here.
So, in place of say their tab control, then consider using the jQuery one. As noted, I would wrap say the jQuery.UI tab control into a user control, so then you can just drag + drop in that jQuery.UI "tab" control in place of the devExpress one.
Same goes for the multi-select combo box (dropdown list).
So, either you cobbile together some replacements of your own, or you find some replacemetns, or you buy some more controls from another vendor.
The challenge and issue will of course be that each of their controls has a specific object and event model.
However, that's not really any different then say if you started used sweet-alert, and now want to replace sweet-alert say with some jQuery.UI dialogs.
I would say that the real challenge of replacing their controls is often not so much finding a replacement, but finding something that has a great look and feel. The main huge wonderful bonus of the devExpress controls tends to be their look and feel. In other words, they had someone with REALLY good taste in terms of look and feel.
I mean, for years I used the ajaxtoolkit. (free, open source). it was and still remains a fantastic set of controls. The pop dialog, the tab control, the multi-select combo box, the HTML editor?
They are all great, but their HUGE downside is not the features, but the controls from that free toolkit look like something from the 1980's!!!
The popular jQuery.UI? Same thing, the controls look ugly and something designed by a un-employed rodeo clown living in a trailer park.
There is a HUGE but BEYOND huge reason that bootstap is so popular.
Know the answer?
Why of course bootstrap is popular for ONE big HUGE massive SIMPLE reason:
Bootstrap has a fantastic look + feel. (zero other reasons for bootstrap being popular!!).
If you ever hired a graphic artist to re-work the look and feel of your web site? Guess what? Their resulting work and suggestions will look like the default of bootstrap!!!
So, someone in the print and graphic design industry or someone with VERY good talent and great taste created the bootstrap system. So, when you use bootstrap, then you get fantastic looking results, results that normally would take a full time graphic artist on your staff.
Regardless, we are wondering off topic here.
The main issue you have to determine is how many controls were used from devExpress. Most of their controls do follow a similar object model as the base controls found in asp.net webform controls.
So, for example, jQuery.UI controls has a great set of features (a great set of UI components), but they look way too dated and old fashioned.
The issue you have is not that you want to replace some of the devExpress controls you used, but how much work it would be to replace say a dev-express "gridview" with another different grid control. Every single one of those controls used will not only require you to spend HUGE amounts of time finding a replacement, but I think the LARGER issue is finding something that don't look like it was created by someone living in mom's basement, or by that drunken un-employed rodeo clown that does not belong in our industry.
your issue is not finding some replacement controls, your issue is how much code and money (time and resources) you have available to replace those controls.
You can no more change a bunch of code in c# to then using say client side JavaScript can then you take some Pascal code, and covert that code to vb.net code.
There no more a replacement for those controls from dev-express then there is deciding tomorrow to re-write some server side code in vb.net to now being client side JavaScript code.
In fact, what I am quite much telling you?
How the computer and IT industry has worked for 50+ years has NOT change one bit, and it not change one bit if you decide to rip out some existing controls and replace them with different controls.
Its possible you are asking for something you never seen, never heard of, and thus are imagining some magic wand here, but those don't exist in our industry either, do they?
As I noted, for quite some time, I used the AjaxToolKit. Turns out that jQuery.UI has near EVERY the same kind of controls available. But, the massive difference is jQuery.UI controls are client side ones, but worse yet, they don't work the same as the AjaxToolKit ones. In other words, there is a nice "tab" control in AjaxToolkit, and there is a nice tab control in jQuery.UI. So, they both are tab control, but THEY are VAST different in their operations, how you use them, how they work.
However, both the jQuery.UI and the AjaxToolkit tab control?
My gosh, do they look like crap.
At least the jQuery.UI one can be easy bootstrapped styled.
Again, note how we not really now back to a JUST having a control replacement, but one that looks VERY nice and VERY tasteful out of the box, and a control that should take zero efforts on your part to obtain that great look and feel.
Want to know what product has those great looking controls and great look and feel out of the box?
the DevExpress ones!!!
I am working on a winforms client server application that will load one of many forms that would be used to enter data or retrieve data or search for data. I want to put buttons on the left side of the screen to select which form is loaded on the right, and buttons at the top for the usual New, Open, delete etc.
I began working on this by making an MDI form that would popup a child window that allows to user to pick the application they want to use. Then when they select it, it would load the appropriate form on the right and update the text and functions of the buttons on the left. I was using panels to load the forms into for the button form (which I called the Navigator) and the application form. I had to use events to make changes to the different button forms when the form on the right was changed. A friend of mine said that I was probably going about this in the wrong way. He said there is probably a better design pattern or methodology or controls that already do that for me.
I dont know how to even search for something like this on the web.
Can someone give me some direction on this?
I can do the research if I am pointed in the right direction.
Maybe there is a control that already does all this?
Thank You.
We use a similar pattern. MDI parent with menus for objects and tasks. MDI Child forms (about 30) for each object/task. Left "nav" button in three groups: 1:1 (calling up l related objects), 1:N (display lists of related objects - inspections, equipment, etc.), N:N:X (other complex relationships or tasks). The body has a tab control to group data. At least one tab is a datagridview that is reused for the 1:N lists.
Left nav button sets are dependent on the object being managed. We add the buttons dynamically but in most case they are hard coded - we just don't use the toolbox to place the buttons on the child forms. Each button set is in a Panel - I would probably use a FlowPanel if I were to start over.
We build a "model" form on one of the more complex objects, built all the data binding logic, and then used that form as a basis for the other objects. We didn't use inheritance as supplied by Visual Studio/VB.Net.
We do our own control data "binding." We use ADO.Net and SQL Server. Our child forms only display one record and do not support the typical record navigation seen in the wizard generated forms - this works fine in our case as we navigate sideways through our data. e.g. Application, Authority to Construct, Permit - then inspections, renewals etc. all related to one Facility. (we're a regulator agency)
We use VB.Net as a lot of the business logic was developed in VB6. I'd still use VB.Net today vs C# - much easier to use for business logic and more maintainable IMO.
One issue to consider - some have out the long knives for WinForms (and VB.Net.) I can't see Microsoft depreciating WinForms but there are those advocating that. Many cannot appreciate the simplicity (albeit limited flexibility) of the WinForms that allows us to concentrate on the business being done. I keep looking at WPF but simply cannot see the usefulness of all the UI power it provides. WPF proponents will push MVVM but that is just more complexity that is not needed for small scale development or production (20 users with desktops o a LAN) environments. WPF does not lead itself to our sideways navigation.
I think the left toolbar for selecting the form is a good pattern, but make it collapsible (hide) so the user could use all the desktop space.
As for MDI personally I don't like it because fell a bit outdated and cluttered. But again look for a balance of form and function.
For the top toolbar I would make it part of each form so it would be easy to program the logic. It an unnecesary complication put them on the master form.
As a recomendation you could look, Designing Web Interfaces even it's more focussed to web could give some pointers in user interaction.
For more informacion search ui patterns, user interaction design.
I bet you guys know Google Chrome browser, yeah it comes from Chromium open-source projects, added some Google specific features.
I found the multi-tab GUI is quite attractive, especially the "drag-and-drop" feature for tabs and windows:
to "pull a tab" out to form a separate window, or
vice versa, to join a tab into a windows (that has a collection of tabs).
This would be quite helpful for designing some multi-process applications to achieve the stability, and a cool user experience, but ... how?
is it possible to do this in WPF?
or even one step more, is it possible to do this in MVVM?
Yeah, technically, everything is possible, but I can't see an easy pattern to do this
for WPF, how to handle such specific "crossing window" mouse interaction?
for MVVM, hmmm, will this be too challenging for MVVM?
cheers
maybe you should have a look at these libs/frameworks:
http://fabtab.codeplex.com/
http://avalondock.codeplex.com/
http://fluidkit.codeplex.com/
Its definitely possible. I've recreated the chrome tab look in the past with MVVM, complete with drag and drop, and I know another guy who created a tabbed application that lets you "pull away" tabs into a new window of its own. I believe it was all one application with multiple windows, so all open windows were part of the same application even if they show up separately in the task bar.
I'm not sure if I have his source code or not, I'd have to go digging for it.
I'm writing an application that is supposed to show and hide the content of the main window stack panel based on the user choice. For example, the user clicks on the button that displays the list of the customers, then click on the button that displays the ordering form. The customers content should be hidden and the ordering form should be visible. Moreover, if there are contents with related information (like customers and their data) I want to be able to change the data in one window and it should automatically refresh the data in the other window when the user decides to open it. Is there a good way to do it in MVVM?
Thanks for any suggestions.
Because this question is so generic, the answer must be as well, and the answer is that this is exactly what MVVM is for - modeling data and binding it as needed. In fact, I would argue that a majority of MVVM examples you find online will be some flavor of an answer to your question, most likely using good ol' Northwind.
It sounds like you need to really take a good look at how you want to do your design before you jump in and start coding.
You might want to check out Prism (or as it is really named Composite Application Guidance). You can build really complex and modular designs with it.
You might be interested in the MVVM sample applications of the WPF Application Framework (WAF).
Writer: Shows how the Views (UserControls) can be switched (Edit mode; Print Preview mode).
BookLibrary: Shows how data modified in one View is automatically updated in other Views.
I have a winforms application that doesn't have a shared set of tools that I can provide on a toolbar. But I want to have a toolbar, so I was planning on using that space to provide quick links to the most popular portions of the product. I will eventually add knowledge to the product to know which screens the current user favors and provide those as quick links on the toolbar. But is this a reasonable use of a toolbar for a desktop product, from a design and usability point of view?
Do not automatically add knowledge about what a user prefers to generate a toolbar. Having a dynamically generated toolbar is confusing for users. It's fine if your configuration bar makes suggestions dynamically (i.e. suggesting buttons), but changing the layout itself is evil.
I think a toolbar makes a good aesthetic, but if you merely want to seperate parts of the app then a Tab bar makes more sense for usability.
With the advent of tabbed browsing, every user understands the tab concept.
Sure. Firefox has something similar in their 'Bookmarks Toolbar'.
Peachtree Accounting also has a toolbar like this, as do many others.
Tabbing is OK as long as there aren't too many.
Would be real good if the user could personalize the toolbar themselves. Sometimes I don't only want places I frequent, but screens that I use occasionally that are hard to find through menus or whatnot.
To me, this looks like a job for a menu with a MRU list, or support 'Add to Favorites'.