Before I begin, I'm no SL or WPF master, so I need some guidance. What I have is a List<CustomObject> . I then have a view that I can bind a "CustomObject" to and have all the data displayed. Now to keep intack with the Metro guidelines and Navigation guidelines, I want to be able to use the SL Control Toolkit Gesture Service to detect a flick (this part is done and working). When I flick left, it binds current list position -1 when I flick right is binds current list position + 1.
Now, I need to make it pretty. I'd like it to behave similar to the pivot control, as when I hold down, it moves the grid to the left and when the full flick is created it slides away to the left or right and loads the the next item.
These lists can have 100's of items, so dynamically adding them to a Pivot control isn't an option.
I know I have to capture the OnDelta and start moving the grid, but I'm really trying to find a sample that's similar to what I'm looking for to give me all the peices. There used to be a few custom implementations of the Pivot and Panorama control but I can't find them.
Any ideas that can point me to the right place?
Thanks!
Because you need to create multiple instances of whatever displays your CustomObject I would consider using a Pivot control with three items in it. The three items should be the current item and the ones either side of it.
As the user navigates between items update the DataContext/Binding of the other items so they reflect the itesm next to the one currently displayed. (You'll only need to set one at a time.)
I've used this technique successfully in apps where each page wasn't excessively complicated to load. (When it was there was a lag when navigating quickly between items.)
Related
Hoping you can help me as I have searched a lot of forums and did not find the same question, never mind the answer I need :)
I have a power point pack which I have put together. It is built to be a template for my team to use repeatedly and is set up using slide masters to control the layout. Each layout slide in the slide master includes two checkboxes to identify either a pass or a fail. My problem is that when you insert a new slide (by either duplicating an existing slide or adding a slide from the slide master layout), and change the checkbox value it also changes on the other slide. Is there a way either using some quick VBA or otherwise to stop this from happening and break the link between the two slides.
Any help would be really appreciated.
In a weird way, this is reasonable behavior from PowerPoint, though it certainly does seem bizarre.
Shapes on a master layout appear on any slide based on that layout. Though they appear on the slide, they're not editable on the slide; it's as though the slide were a clear layer above the layout, one that you can add more stuff to but that you can't "penetrate" to get at the stuff on the layout below.
Placeholders are a special case and so, apparently, are ActiveX controls like your checkboxes, which DO allow editing. So what's happening is that when you change a text box, you're changing the text box on the layout, not on the slide itself (the checkbox doesn't even exist on the slide ... you can't select and move it in normal view, for example, unless you go to the layout in Master view).
When you change the checkbox, you're changing the one on the layout, and since the checkboxes appear on any slide based on the layout, when you change the checkbox, you're changing the one on the layout, ALL of the slides based on that layout get the changed checkboxes.
Some mildly tricky VBA could look at each slide and if it's based on the layout that contains the checkboxes, COPY them to the current slide from the layout and finally make the checkboxes on the layout invisible.
The simpler solution might be to supply a sample slide with the checkboxes ON the slide and let the users copy/paste it into their presentations.
[later]
I've reported this to MS as not so much a bug as a design oversight; the behavior may make sense, but it's not useful and can mislead users (as you well know).
I'd suggest that you visit https://powerpoint.uservoice.com and suggest that ActiveX objects on masters/layouts behave more like placeholders ... spawn new instances of themselves when a new slide based on the layout is added rather than letting the user THINK that's what's happened.
I am currently a little bit troubled by the following problem. I have a user interface which basically shows a graphic (a canvas made of Lines, Circles, ... these are all WPF objects). Depending on the selection a user makes in the menu, some items get deleted and some get added. So the basic image looks the same, but a few modifications are made.
The user has the possibility to select - say - 10 different "pages" by clicking a Next/Previous Button.
I am using MVVM Light and my ViewModel contains all the items of the graphic (all Lines, ...).
Now I would like to print that graphic to multiple pages. The first page should contain the graphic with changes from page 1, the second page contains the graphic with changes from page 2 and so on. The actual number of pages is dynamic. I track this with a property CurrentPage and a property PagesTotal.
Whenever I push the "Next" button, this causes a command to be executed which will change the variable CurrentPage and also makes sure that the correct items are displayed.
Now I would like to print this but this is where I'm stuck. I dont' mind leaving the MVVM zone and doing some dirty work in code-behind but I would refuse to draw everything again like in the old GDI days.
Any ideas are really welcome.
Create a UserControl containing your display logic (you graphic, for instance). Grab you ViewModel list and project then in UserControls, setting each ViewModel as each UserControl's DataContext.
Force each one to render calling Measure with infinite value and then Arrange with the resulting DesiredHeight and Width. Then follow the procedures to print WPF visuals (link link link).
Essentially, this should be quite simple if and only if your views work independently; i.e. your ViewModel doesn't contain UiElements that are placed into your View.
Simple solution is to basically print your visual root. If need be encapsulate your Views in a user control first.
PrintDialog printDlg = new PrintDialog();
UserControl1 uc = new UserControl1();
printDlg.PrintVisual(uc, "User Control Printing.");
Reference
Alright, I have to admin that I now switched back to doing the printing through code only. I would have really liked doing it "WPF-style" but handling the multiple pages issue was just too much trouble.
Anyway, there is still one issue regarding the printout left but this will be another question.
Is it normal in a WPF app to create a lot of user controls in order to separate concerns that would otherwise be crammed in a single window with a huge XAML hierarchy? I'm finding that I keep making new user controls, even though I don't intend to reuse them, just so that each of my sub-components has a separate task. I'm also giving each of them their own view model, instead of binding things to properties on one master view model.
Is this normal? I feel like from a code cleanliness perspective I'm doing the right thing. But from a WPF perspective, I feel that this can't be right.
For example, let's say you have a list on the left side of the window, and when you select an item, it changes what's displayed on the right side. There are also buttons above your list to manipulate it, adding and deleting items for example. I would be inclined to pull that whole list out as a UserControl, which would contain just the list and the control buttons above it. Then the main window would just include my new control.
Am I going overboard?
I have used the demo here. All works well.
http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Word-2010-Using-the-Drag-81bb5bff
However, when I try and swap out the listbox for a treeview, it just doenst want to play.
5 minutes to get the demo working and over 2 hours now trying to use the tree view instead. IT shouldnt be that hard surely?
Relating specifcally to the demo mentiond above and my modfiication from a listbox to a tree view:
There is a test on "e.Data.GetDataPresent" which determines the "effect" of the cursor/pointer as it is moving across the GUI - from the tree view in the task pane to over the document (With the effect being set in a ItemDrag event in this instance).
A "DragEnter" event is rasied when the cursor is then moved over the document (well a form overlaid on the document), If data is not found, the effect is set to "DragDropEffects.None".
This will mean when dropping the item on the document (via the invisibile overlaid form) the "DragDrop" event will not be raisd as "DropEffects.None" stops this.
The problem was surrounding my test of data bing present in the DragEventArgs.Data property.
The interesting thing, though, is the affect of "DragDropEffects" and its side effect on other events.
I'm developing a Winforms application which has been running for years with an explorer view (TreeView left, screen right). I means that:
All the screens have an hierarchy organization
All the nodes on TreeView have one and only one screen related.
A screen gets activated when a node on treeview gets selected.
One of the advantages is that the user has an ordered stucture and one of the inconveniencies is that with hundreds of screens the user gets confused.
I see other options: use classical menus, use tabs or a mix of everything.
Any advice for a good way to show a lot of screens to user in a user-friendly way?
Update: I'm changed "hundreds screens" by "a lot of screens". The most important thing is not show all at time but that the user can find what they need easily.
Update2: In this proposal, the user only see one screen at time.
Update3: I'm talking about handling multiple screens not showing multiple screens. No MDI, only one ontime.
I have used other applications similar to this is the past, and the major problem is trying to find the exact screen you want. There are two common solutions to this problem, shortcut codes and favorites menu.
With the shortcut codes, allocate a short code (5 or 6 characters) to each screen. The user then inputs this shortcut code into a text box which will then jump to the correct screen. Users will create their own list of often used codes.
For the favorites menu, allow users the ability to be able to create their own menu list in the structure they want. They will find things easier, if they organize it themselves.
Why do you need to show so many seprate screens at once? Why not just show the screen for the currnetly selected node, why are all needed at once?
If it is all tabular data is is probably too much to be consumed all at once, if it is graphical data, could it not be combined?
There may be a valid reason to show all the data at once or there may not, hard to tell from what is provided in your question. With that said, better to keep it simple than overload the user. MDI apps are never easy to use.
Tabs may work for a small set of items but still is not a good UI for hundreds of items.
If you are only showing one element at a time, out of hundreds possible on the tree nodes, then that is fine. The one screen showing at a time would be contextual to the item selected as the user moves through the nodes. Think of the Outlook approach where what is selected in the left pane is displayed in the right pane in whatever form fits the data being displayed.
Have you considered the Office Ribbon?
The Ribbon gives you a lot of flexibility on how to show and
organize functions and it's highly visual.
Here is a good link about the Ribbon and also here
To use the Ribbon you have to license it from Microsoft. You can do that online.
Providing the user with ketboard shotcuts is usually a good thing too.
I also like to provide the user with an "autocomplete" field on the menu
so that they can can find the function by name (or part of it) and be
able to navigate directly to where they want to go.
I general I find trees to be a bad idea, especially if your "hierarchy" is of a small fixed depth.
If you have a small fixed depth, consider replacing the tree with a list. At the top of the list can be drop-downs for filtering based on the node-level properties. It will use up less screen real-estate because it is vertical-only, with no horizontal component.
Clicking on an item can display it in the view (like currently), but it may be a good idea to allow a user to double-click on more than one item which could launch more windows, or tile with the existing displayed items. (I am assuming that currently, the user only sees a single detailed view at once in any given window.)
Actually, it’s hard to beat a hierarchy for organizing large numbers of items. I wouldn’t favor a classical pulldown menu for vast numbers of windows because it would be even harder to keep track of where you are than in a tree (e.g., a tree lets you look in multiple branches at once). But here’s a few alternatives:
I’m not clear how you ended up with so many windows, but maybe it comes from combinations of classes, views, content, and detail, or maybe it comes from using a task-centered UI structure for something far too complex (I’ve more on that at http://www.zuschlogin.com/?p=3). For complex apps, you want a different primary window for each significant class of data object (e.g., invoices, employees). These are listed on one menu, and typically there’s few enough (15 or less) that it can be single non-cascading pulldown menu. The content of each window is set by a separate menu, perhaps by a menu item that opens a dialog that may include a list box (like an Open dialog) or other controls for querying/searching. The “view” of each window (how the data objects are shown, e.g., table versus form) is set by menu items in the View menu. Details for any given object in a window can be shown in a separate pane within the window in a master-detail relation, essentially turning you data objects into a menu for details. A single window can have multiple detail panes for the user to open and close to select the specific detail to show. Tabs may also be used within a single pane to fit subdivisions of content.
You say it’s not important to show all window options at once, but often showing all options at once makes it easiest for users to find what they need. Maybe you need a “home” window that lists all the other windows in organized, labeled, and separated categories. This is will be easier to use than the tree if your users select a window then stick with it for most of the session. Your tree is better if there's frequently selection of windows throughout the session, owing to the overhead of getting to the home window. If all windows/options don’t fit on a single home window, then show only selected common windows for each category on the home window and provide a button or link to show an exhaustive list.
If you’re talking 100’s of windows, maybe you should have Search, perhaps in addition to a menu-based browse approach to getting to a window.
In any case, providing easy access to the few most commonly used windows is a good idea. Such windows can be explicitly selected by the designer, based on user research, or selected by the the user (favorites), but it also typically works well to make it automatic with an algorithm that uses some combination of frequency and recency of use.