I'm new to WPF and I've been tasked with creating a UI and I was told it needs to be 'sexy'.
My first task is to createa menu structure for the various options I need to make available to the user. I'd like to do something like this, taken from http://www.wpftutorial.net :
Unfortunately I don't see any examples on that site of how to implement a vertical menu with sub-menus that have the glassy look and feel.
I'm hoping to achieve the same level of 'sexy' (<-- my bosses term, not mine), but the style doesn't need to be exactly the same.
What steps do I need to take to achieve this?
The 'sexy' layout you showed, is actually quite outdated (glossy is so 2008-2010...).
Anyway, if you don't go for 3rd parties, here is what this is:
The container is a Menu
Each item is a MenuItem
Some MenuItems contain their own MenuItems (that's the horizontal dropdown you see)
Menu and MenuItem seem to have a custom Template/Style/ControlTemplate
It can indeed be quite some work for someone new to WPF, but you'll definitely learn a lot, however it'll take you several weeks to get it right with no experience.
HTH,
Bab.
You may need to go with 3rd party controls.
DevExpress and Telerik offer some very good WPF controls.
This will save you a lot of time as they have built-in themes and are really good looking.
Trying to do this yourself will probably cost you more in the long run.
You could even download the trial versions and show your boss a demo of the app.
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 need a WPF control that acts like the Panorama control for Windows Phone 7, but I need it for a desktop application.
It will contain a series of panels (or Panorama Items) that the application will be able to slide through horizontally programmatically.
Also, the content inside the panels not currently displayed on the screen will need to be "lazy loaded". In other words, they should be referenced but not loaded or rendered.
Can I somehow adapt the WP7 Panorama control to do this? Or will I have to develop a custom control from scratch to behave similarly to it?
Thank you!
EDIT:
I could probably use a VirtualizingPanel to implement the lazyload behaviour.
MahApps.Metro while still not super mature does allow for the wp7 Panorama control. Demo of how to use a panorama here. I've played with it a little and while its not the most customizable thing out there it gets the job done. Pretty sweet. Also Sacha Barber (Codeproject Demigod) wrote up an article on making your own. Of which I haven't looked at yet but, the guy usually does awesome work. So I'd check that one out as well.
http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/arielbh/archive/2010/10/21/porting-windows-phone-7-s-panorama-control-to-silverlight-4.aspx gives some clues about how do to this.
It suggests using http://phone.codeplex.com/ as your base and then you can use http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=4b281bde-9b01-4890-b3d4-b3b45ca2c2e4 (Microsoft Surface Manipulations and Inertia Sample for Microsoft Silverlight) to run convert get it to respond to touch.
Seems none exist as far as I can see so far.
This blog has started an attempt at making it, so you could work from there to make your own. Be sure to also check out this page which details the creation of an individual panorama item too.
I don't know what this is called in SL, but I would like to replicate this functionality. If you go to this site: http://www.mscui.com/PatientJourneyDemonstrator/PrimaryCareAdmin.htm and click on the "Show Details" button located on the top, right-hand corder of the screen. When you click on this, there should be a "Scene Details" button-like feature on the right side. When you click on this, this is what I would like to implement. Can someone direct me please? Either to an online article, etc...
I'm not precisely sure what feature of the site you'r referring to (I'm blind so the description doesn't make much sense to me). However, two useful links - some of the MSCUI source code is available on Codeplex http://mscui.codeplex.com. Also, the Silverlight developer/designer on this project created Blacklight http://blacklight.codeplex.com which includes visual assets to use with Silverlight.
Although I don't know the specifics of the implementation, as far as I can guess, this is done by having a second Grid that follows the Grid for the page. Then, simply change the visiblity on the "guide" grid when the button toggles.
I believe that is simple, although it'll require you to work to figure out the positioning of the underlying page - but it's more flexible. With Blend it'll be easy.
Alternatively you could have a ton of additional UI elements on the page next to their respective controls, and either Tag or name them in a way that you can iterate over them to control visibility and interaction.
I think you're talking about a the grey overlay with a modal window on top. I think the best way to do that in Silverlight 3 is with the ChildWindow control.
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'.
I'm making my first WPF application, and its purpose is to generate 6 images from some data. Ideally I'd like to display them in the window, with little "forward" and "back" buttons, and a text indicator for where we are in the image-stack. Kind of like a "mini Windows Photo Gallery."
I think the way to do this might be some kind of customization of the ListView styles, but there was also the possibility of using Frame with custom WPF pages or something? I dunno, it seems like there should be a canonical way of doing this.
My current best approach is to customize ListView following the guidelines of one of my WPF books. If someone's already done this, or if there's a better way, please let me know!
You may want to look at the Slide.Show project from Vertigo. They released the source code for it as a WPF demo application. The application is a nice image viewer that you can borrow concepts from. (Microsoft mandated Vertigo to create technology demos for WPF)