Office 2010 Styled Help - wpf

Hi In Office 2010 you get a popup window if you click on ? or press F1
(Sorry for the Danish text)
Before I start coding my own popup Window in WPF, I would like to know if there is some standard behind it, like the good old .CHM file. Microsoft Compiled HTML Help

It is called Vista (Assistance Platform) Help.
Since I have to support XP, I haven't looked into it really (stuck to CHM), but Vista+ has some other helpsystem. I've dug the following links up from my Help link collection
http://helpware.net/aphelp/default.htm
http://www.help-info.de/en/Help_Info_AP_Help/ap_help.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP_Help_1.0
Microsofts Doxygen like tool "Sandcastle" also seems to use it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandcastle_%28software%29

Related

Making icon for a Windows Form: How to make it show up correctly?

OK, so I have built a Windows Form application. I now want an icon for it. So I use the Icon Editor built into Visual Studio 2012. Draw it all out to look nice and purdy. Once I am done, I have a .ico file and I make it the default icon for the project, and also the icon for the one WinForm in the application.
Unfortunately, it does not show up as I have created it! It is displayed as the default icon file as it existed before I modified it in the icon editor. It's a 32x32 4 bit icon. If I change the extension to .bmp it shows up as the default.
It looks like the VS icon editor is editing something else, not the appearance of the icon. Can someone tell me what I am doing wrong?
I used to have a progam called IconArt that would create icons that looked like icons when I used them in VS. IconArt is now abandonware and won't run on my 64bit Windows workstation.
Since I didn't get any answers within the time I was hoping, I posted this question also in the MSDN Visual Studio forum, and got a good answer that I thought I should post here. Credit to Reed Copsey, Jr, for the answer!
This is it:
You'll need to put your design in all of the different versions. ICO
files contain multiple versions of the same image, for different
screen resolutions.
My personal preference is to not use VS - there's an ICO plugin for
Paint.Net (all free) which allows you to make a single image
(typically 256x256), and save multiple versions within an ICO file in
one shot. It's very useful for building icons.
See
http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/topic/927-icon-cursor-and-animated-cursor-format-v37-may-2010/
for the plugin.
Since I am a Paint.Net user, the plugin sounded like a great idea, and I tried it. Bingo! This works very nicely.

Visual Studio 2012 Style Window

I'm interested in creating a window in WPF that has a style similar to the way Visual Studio 2012 looks (the seamless window with color around edges, color is not necessary). This might not be a very programming - oriented question, but does anyone know of a library like the Fluent Ribbon library that can create this style?
Thanks!
I think if you look for the term "Custom Window Chrome" you'll get answers about what you're looking for. I wrote a library a while back that did a lot of the work for this:
http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/WPFShell
There's also a blog post linked there that explains how it's implemented:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/wpfsdk/custom-window-chrome-in-wpf

Microsoft Ribbon for WPF: ribbon:RibbonApplicationMenu issue

Using the excellent Microsoft Ribbon for WPF for .NET 4 (not the .NET 4.5 build in class) I'm trying to achieve a ribbon like in Office 2010:
However I cannot get the File text to be shown on the ribbon:RibbonApplicationMenu.
If I change the project Wizard generated code from
<ribbon:RibbonApplicationMenu SmallImageSource="Resources\SmallIcon.png">
to
<ribbon:RibbonApplicationMenu KeyTipService.KeyTip="F" Label="File">
I get this:
Notice that the text File is not shown. What am I missing?
Looks like you will have to use GlyphRun to display custom text in the head of RibbonApplicationMenu. Please refer to the accepted answer on thread How to set text at the head of a RibbonApplicationMenu
Microsoft needs to fix this. It should work by just setting the "Label" as you described.
EDIT:
I just realized that Microsoft isn't even using the RibbonApplicationMenu...
Look at the following images again:
Microsoft Word is using just a Tab, and turning it blue! (something i haven't figured out how to do)
They really should fix this!
Also, I noticed that Microsoft's blog on the topic just uses Icons:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/wpf/archive/2010/08/03/introducing-microsoft-ribbon-for-wpf.aspx

Richtext editor control or component for winforms that looks/behaves like tiny MCE

I am looking for a free Richtext editor that functions like the TinyMCE editor but for a winforms app
The most important part is that it must implement a editor toolbar so that the user does not need to learn a markup language
What you're talking about has been around for a looong time.
I found an old, free control on softpedia. It doesn't install into the VS2008 toolbox, but you can do that manually, or configure Visual Studio to make it happen automagically.
Here's a look at the designer experience. Looks like Word 2000, probably because of the time it was published.
Craig Andera posted one in 2004, too. Haven't tried it, and haven't seen a picture of it.
DevExpress has a commercial one.
There are many, many others.

How can I make a Windows Explorer file preview screen in WPF?

I'm working on an application that will have attachments, and I would like to create a type of display like in windows Explorer, where you choose a "Details" view, and also show the preview pane.
I would like to be able to show a thumbnail view of the attached file currently selected, based on the file extension.
Does anyone know where I can start to look for examples on how to pull this off?
I know Outlook 2007 can also do something similar using preview handlers. I think that’s going to be the direction I want to go in, but I'm not sure where to start.
Many thanks.
All Hail the Glory of the Hypnotoad!
While you could do it in WPF, you should not do it.
Seriously: don't do it! - you would break many apps (including one of mine).
To do this without .NET, see here for a nice guide.
I think you can start here
http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/eyal/archive/2007/07/29/Hosting-vista_2F00_office-2007-previewers-in-winform-application.aspx
(the code is partially black on black, at least for me, but you can disable the styles or just copy it)

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