Simple question, but is there any way of putting the artboard designer on one screen, and the XAML on another in Blend 4?
It's a real pain constantly flicking between the two when I've got three monitors to play with!
Short answer, no.
What you can do however though that I do often is set your Designer & Code View to be side-by-side via View -> Split View Orientation -> Split Views Horizontally then drag the Blend window across two of the screens with the split obviously between the two screens. That works pretty well.
Otherwise you could have the design open in Blend in one screen, and the xaml open in VS on another screen...becomes a pain though since whenever you save on one, you'll be prompted to update on the other.
Wish there was a better way, but I'm pretty sure none exist besides those mentioned. Hope this helps.
Related
You know, like in CCleaner app where main activity is on the left side of the app and the right side area is changeable fragment.
http://cache.filehippo.com/img/ex/3049__ccleaner1.png
How to do it? I imagine I could do it by putting all fragments in the same place and just change their visibility to show just 1 at the moment, but that would make the code a whole lot of mess.
I've done this in the past by using UserControls. It's worked nicely for things like choosing payment methods (cash, cc, cheque...).
There are a couple of options for changing the display, either have all the UserControls present on the form and hide or show them as required or have an empty placeholder panel and use a factory to construct the appropriate UserControl as needed. I've done both and it really depends on the complexity (and expected longevity and users) of the project as to which is appropriate.
Using a Model-View-Presenter pattern helped with managing all of this.
What you don't want to end up with is a massive switch statement that changes the visibility of dozens of manually positioned controls individually. I've seen it and that way lies madness.
I've got a massive UI that I'm designing. The way that my employer wants it, there are at least 100 labels. Now, I've always thought that in cases like this, breaking up the UI into smaller custom controls was the ideal way to go. However, someone recently told me that custom controls are really only for code re-use. What is the actual suggested practice for this?
EDIT
The finished form will look like this:
Now, I'm using WPF for the UI, and I'm thinking of breaking this down into smaller bits.
Based on your image i see some repetitions, each of this repetitions could be a custom UserControl
But it depends on the usability is it easier to write a custom UserControl so do it but if it would reduce the readability of your code and it also adds additional complexity don't do it
here are an example of what could be separate UserControl's
the green ones are possible useful encapsulations of logic
the orange ones maybe need some not market stuff (don't know enough about your software)
the red ones are the maybe's based on the intern use (from the visual part they are repetitions so the should custom UserControl)
Since your UI is read-only, I'd suggest using a grid.
Are you new to WPF? To break the View into bits WPF offers you CustomControls and UserControls. They are two very similar things yet completely different from each other. CustomControls are Buttons, Labels, TextBoxes, DataGrids...etc. They are basically simple stand-alone controls. UserControls are groups of stand-alone controls serving a purpose such as example a Button and a ComboBox next to each other so user can select something in ComboBox and confirm that by clicking the Button.
If you wish to display data from database I suggest you DataGrid which will give you a table-alike look with rows and columns and all that. If you wish to place few buttons next to DataGrid on which the user may click to insert a new row or to edit a certain cell then I suggest you to wrap all that with a UserControl which you can reuse in other places where you have to display and change data from database too.
You should be using a datagrid and can customize its template to render individual cells as Textblock (lighter version of Label) from a rendering perspective. The main difference between Textblock and Label is very minor things such as access keys and disabled state behavior. But from a WPF object hierarchy - Textblocks are much lighter. But besides that point - from your employer perspective - once you have customized the grid template and render them (so as they look as textblocks/labels) - your employer should have no problems.
Also as somebody suggested above - if you want to logically break sections of the UI since they maybe coming from a different table in db - then User controls is the way to go (for maintainability of code)
Let me know if you are looking for more technical details or need help further technically.
There is nothing wrong in making and using custom controls or user controls or defining some data templates which will be reused depending on how your data is organized.
For sure the UI looks pretty messy and some sort of grid should be used with templates for example where there is similar data. I also have the suggestion and first think about the data and the functionality before starting and let the UI be driven by that. For sure you will the reuse controls/templates. If you think in front on the model and behavior the UI can afterwards more easily changed.
Create your viewmodel correctly, implement the functionality in commands, use bindings, after that the UI will come naturally, reuse controls, use several grids, make the UI more user friendly using several regions, tabs, windows or anything that makes the user more comfortable.
I am new to WPF environment and I am experiencing some problems like if there are alots of things how do we manage them.for example I have three borders each of same size same location and they contains controls like textboxes etc etc we construct them sequentially but when it comes to edit we get in trouble modifying the border that is at bottom.
So in short how do we manage many controls on single page so that it remains easy to edit
Not sure I completely understand your concerns, but here are several point that make editing WPF UI pretty easy:
Correct usage of layout panels. If you will use approach with absolute positions for each control then it might become a nightmare to move or resize some of your controls. Correct layout (and panels such as DockPanel/StackPanel/etc) might help you a lot.
Incapsulating repeatable parts. WPF has a lot of feature to avoid repeating UI code. I'm talking mostly about Styles and Control templates at the moment. If you have your borders repeating through the entire window, maybe you should think on extracting this border as a ControlTemplate for ContentControl for example?
but I've found that encapsulating controls such as borders, textboxes etc in User Controls helps to keep things well managed (not to mention helps reduce code), similarly using a Resource Dictionary to store styles/animations is useful for very big projects (remember though that the local resources will take precedence when applied so remove them if they not in use)
furthermore, using Layout Panels such as Stacks,Grids and Dockpanels allows you to collapse User Controls when not needed or otherwise (also I've found that for some reason, Grids allow controls to overlap (when items are not correctly ordered in Grid Rows and Columns) which can lead to some elements not being seen in design.
Plan your layout properly and think through which Panels would be best for them, having to go back much later and change can be annoying (though admittedly it happens).
Also remember to use partial classes to properly structure your stuff, having to read through 1000+ lines of code to find something can be a nightmare.
I need to create a WPF application which is maximized and which rotates amongst about 10 different screens. Each screen will take the entire area and show different content.
I already know how to maximize the window with
My question is what is best to put inside that window to achieve what I want?
Ideally I'd be able to have 10 different .xaml files and I just load one after the other to take the entire screen. I'm not sure the best approach for accomplishing this in WPF.
Thank you!
One quick way to do this is to use WPF's built in page navigation. By making your root window a NavigationWindow and each view a class derived from Page (similar to work with to a UserControl or Window) you can just set the NavigationWindow.Source to a relative URI that points to the page you want to show (like a web browser) and simply switch it as needed.
This sounds like a classic MVVM application, which is simply too much to put into detail here. Google MVVM or Model-View-ViewModel, or pick up the book Advanced MVVM by Josh Smith (widely regarded as an expert in such things).
However, this is basically what you are going to have:
One class, the ViewModel, is an abstraction of the data that you need to bind to
Your data Model
A View for each thing you want to show. A View is simply something that holds your UI, be it a DataTemplate or a UserControl. Each View is bound to the ViewModel
The Views are the things that will "rotate" (although rotate in WPF implies animation and/or transformation). How you switch between them is up to you, although it sounds almost like something that would be done with a DispatcherTimer and animation (i.e. like fading between pictures in a slideshow).
This question is really too broad for this forum - you will need to do quite a bit of research on WPF fundamentals before proceeding. Again, MVVM is a good direction to start.
EDIT: Something More Lowbrow, per OP Request
This is probably as simple was you can make it (and still create separate XAML files for each piece of content):
First, create 10 UserControls (XAML files) for the stuff you want to show.
Next, add an instance of each of these user controls to your main window. Set the Visibility of each of these to Collapsed, except the first one to show.
Put a "Next" button on the main window.
In the code-behind, handle the Click event for the Next button. In there, keep track of which UserControl is visible, by name. Set the one that is currently visible to Visibility.Collapsed, and set the next one that is supposed to be visible to Visibility.Visible.
This is certainly an ugly solution, and not very WPF-ish, but it will get the job done.
Starting with Silverlight development. Yet to read a good Silverlight book: suggestions welcome.
I have a main GUI screen where 7 user controls (menu items) 'swoop' into sight, all along their own path. I have the user controls nicely seperated and behaving well. Having multiple storyboards (1 each for each menuitem) with multiple keyframe animations (X,Y,height, width) in one .XAML is not sitting well with me. Repeating all those property values is hideous, neverthemind maintenance.
I've tried to move values into the app.xaml and set animation durations with style keys, but having limited success. Can anyone suggest a nice way of making this cleaner? Refactor the storyboards out to their own control? Property values in resources? Dynamic building in codebehind?
Referring me to a how-to site is fine as well.
You may be falling foul of XAML overload. It seems that most developers, when starting with WPF or Silverlight, feel everything should go into XAML that can go into XAML. They then get to a point where they're fighting with the XAML to get something done that would take moments in the code-behind (I too have hit his issue).
If you're finding something cumbersome or ugly in XAML, consider writing it in code. It's not a crime. You can probably declare a single method for creating your storyboard and then use it multiple times, or you could create a class that wraps your storyboard and add multiple instances into XAML in much neater ways. As you have quite rightly identified towards the end of your post, there are multiple ways to make it cleaner, you just need to decide which one suits your situation.
Without some example XAML, it's difficult to visualize the exact issue you face, so I couldn't make a distinct recommendation, but I hope this helps. I like the sound of your swooping controls - the image I have in my head is quite nice indeed.