I've seen the beautiful MetroTwit interface http://www.metrotwit.com/ ; I would like to know which WPF components have been used for trying to reproduce it.
MetroTwit designer here :)
All of the controls and animations were designed from scratch.
Obviously I drew a lot of inspiration from Zune, Windows Phone 7 but everything was re-templated from the default base styles. Most of the icons were made in Photoshop then converted into Expression Design to be output in XAML.
Since much of our design was with a Twitter client in mind, it's not universal for all applications. What you should really do is read up on the User Experience Design Guidelines for Windows Phone for a much broader understanding of Metro.
After you have a solid grasp of what you believe Metro to be, it's much easier to style the controls to the way that suits your application.
Look at http://metrotheme.codeplex.com/ and http://www.silverlight.net/content/samples/sl4/themes/cosmopolitan.html those are silverlight but you can use it in WPF with some changes
Related
Not sure if this an appropriate forum for this, but I need some guidance from those who are further down the road than I am with WPF.
I've used Telerik Winform controls for a years and have mixed feelings about them. They look good, but they are deeply nested, have a steep learning curve, and sometimes don't perform the best. For example, just working with a RadWindow in the WPF designer, it's slow compared with native wpf controls.
I like Caliburn.Micro MVVM framework and MahApps metro styles, but to keep the same look and feel for a ribbon bar I'd need to use another third party tool (like Fluent) or just use the Microsoft Ribbon View control and figure out how to use templates and styles myself (or find an existing metro template for it).
I tried to combine Telerik and Caliburn but had trouble getting them to work. There is a Caliburn Telerik library but its based on Caliburn Micro 1.5.2 and I'm trying to use Caliburn.Micro 2.0.2. Problem is I always get an aero-looking full window title bar and frame wrapped around the Telerik styled window.
I just don't know enough about conventions and such to make it all work together. And frankly, not sure it's worth the trouble. I'm looking for a more streamlined approach that lessens my dependence on pricy and heavy third party controls.
So, I'm looking for guidance on whether I should use straight Telerik, straight caliburn or go through the work of trying to get them to work together.
What I would prefer is to use Caliburn as the mvvm framework with a layer of styling, like what MahhAps provides. And for those controls that aren't styled, like the Ribbon Bar, to either use Microsoft's ribbon bar and find templates and styles that would work or maybe a 3rd party control like Fluent. But would I be getting in over my head in trying to learn templates and styles?
Sorry for the ramble, but I'm frustrated and need some help in working through this. Thanks.
I found a great resource that maybe others new to WPF and struggling with similar questions would benefit from: MarkPad, a Code52 project on CodePlex.
It's written in WPF using Caliburn Micro MVVM framework (although it's version 1.5.2 rather than the current 2.0) and MahApps metro styles with some "roll your own" windows. It's a great looking app with the kind of simple menuing system I was looking for AND an MDI implementation. It's also a good example on how to organize a somewhat complex WPF application, something I was also unsure about.
It answers the question: Do I need to use Telerik? The answer is a definite NO. It's a great learning tool for me and maybe will be useful to others.
I apologize for my newbie question by why do WPF apps look like web pages?
I am new to gui and still shopping for a book to learn gui programming. The push seems to be in the direction of WPF but all the screenshots of WPF applications that I've seen look like cheap web pages. Frankly I'd be ashamed to sell an app that looked like a web page.
I realize that WPF is built on XML technology but can you not build normal looking WPF apps in Visual Studio (via button("widget")) drag-n-drop? In other words an app that does not look like a web page?
How can WPF be a replacement for WinForms or the like when it doesn't provide the same standard application look?
The default look of WPF applications is admittedly rather simple, but WPF allows unprecedented control over how your application looks.
Here are some examples, all of them WPF applications.
If you are to deveop an application under .net and are able to target .net 3.5 or above, you will want to use wpf. If you don't know much about ui technology and want to work with .net, understanding windows forms is useful but not necessary. You should learn wpf regardless.
2 perks that I have found while using the framework:
- it is very easy to inject branding and custom interactivity into your app. It is then very easy to change these when your sales guy decides the want it blue, not red.
- the way components are organized on screen is relational like a webpage, not coordinate based like windows forms. This is ideal for scenarios when translated strings will change length (English to German for example). Under usual circumstances the ui will resize itself automatically at runtime to make it all fit.
If you just throw in controls and don't change the style of anything, your first wpf applications will look almost identical to native win32 applications. It is very easy to change this, but you will achieve great results regardless of the "look" you choose. Microsoft also provide the tools to create new ui components that look like native buttons. There are a host of other features that will make you grin while learning!
This is not a technical note, but at the moment wpf is a highly sellable skill and looks great on a cv! Companies want great branding in their apps. Wpf helps that happen.
WPF does provide the same appication look wich is the default look. When you drag and drop your controls onto the design surface (just like in windows forms, MFC ...) the controls look as you would expect them to look under the current theme. Chances are that you have seen quite some WPF applications without noticing. Just because they look like any other app.
The reason you might see more WPF based applications that have some sort of custom look and feel to them is simple because it is so much easier to do what ever you like to your GUI than in any other GUI framework on any platform. This is both blessing and curse. While you being absolutely flexible it is easy to do absolutely horrible stuff.
user440267, I believe that the most application in WPF are built using normal Windows. But there is an option which we don't create a window, instead we create a page, which behave like you think.
Whilst working in Silverlight I am always fighting the urge to work on the screen design rather than coding the behaviour (which is what I should be doing). My cunning plan is to find a theme that looks something like MS SketchFlow or Balsamiq which will remind me of the draft nature of the screens whilst being somewhat prettier than the default look & feel of Silverlight.
Does anyone know of such a theme? Alternatively can anyone give advise on how they overcame there design addiction :)
Thanks,
Dan
Hmm... Work in Visual Studio rather than Blend?
Alternatively, those Sketchflow controls are just that, normal controls that are styled. If you create one of the demo sketchflow projects in blend you can just grab the style file, I think it's "SketchStyles.xaml" and reuse that where you need it.
(I used the 'KioskSketch' sample app btw)
Which library to use for WPF?
Infragistics
ComponentOne
SyncFusions
ActiProSoftware
Telerik
#Reed - None of the Syncfusion WPF controls were ported from Windows Forms. With the grid control, most vendors use a simple ItemsControl based architecture. We have a much more elaborate infrastructure for highly optimized cell oriented rendering. This was implemented to achieve performance as close to Windows Forms performance as possible. The effort on our end to deliver this solution when contrasted with a pure ItemsControl based approach was at least 5x. We have a lot of customers using our Windows Forms controls in real-time scenarios and we wanted to give them the ability to move over to WPF without losing on the performance front. Our key controls offer excellent rendering performance even with millions of data points in direct contrast to solutions that are based on a simple ItemsControl based approach. Our controls often have a steeper adoption curve than others but in the long term we do believe that they are easier to maintain and update. Just my two cents:) Also, we are really keen to work with you on any issues that you are running into. Please let us know. My email is danielj(at)syncfusion.com.
#Tom - If you can send us feedback on the gauge we would greatly appreciate it. We are always looking for ways to improve and your feedback will be really useful.
Ultimately it depends on what you need. I think Syncfusion offers the widest and most actively deployed control suite on the WPF front. Disclaimer - I work for Syncfusion.
I work for a large firm which has long-term license agreement with Syncfusion so I had to use their products for years in pain.
I agree with Reed for Syncfusion's model. They converted their Winforms model (which has major bugs) to look it like WPF, I believe the whole suite is nothing to do with WPF, most of their controls cannot be controlled in XAML, you need to use code behind in order to style even simple things.
They are actually improving this to look more like WPF however with Syncfusion one issue is when you upgrade to a new version, it always breaks previous version based code. It is their marketing strategy and you spend weeks to figure out the new system.
One other issue with Syncfusion is they have quite poor documentation, their support is very weak, so you need to discover things on your own.
I used Telerik WPF in one project which is a much better choice, the performance is much better and the model is really easy to maintain.
We just started to buy DevExpress due to the pain of Syncfusion over years and I believe this is quite good WPF product. It is easy to use, they have really good support and nice documentation. The controls look very professional. First time I feel like I am using actual commercial .NET toolset.
*I do not work for DevExpress or Telerik.
They all have advantages and disadvantages.
Personally, I've found Telerik and Infragistics seemed more like they were designed specifically with WPF in mind.
Syncfusion's offering is more of a port of their Windows Forms product, so the design is more like they're other product lines.
That being said, each product you listed is good - and each have their own feature set. There is no substitute for trying a demo and seeing how you like working with the products in question.
I'm a fan of Component One, mainly based on personal taste.
ActiProSoftware have some good controls, but I find that they don't expose enough properties to make it easy to style and customize, though you can get around this with implicit styles.
Xceed have my favourite Grid control, lots of cool features and easy to work with.
I don't particularly like Telerik and I've never tried SyncFusion.
I would love to try Infragistics as that is one that I haven't tried, but have been really impressed with the demos. Does anyone have any comments on the architecture of Infragistics?
Like Reed said, they all have their advantages and disadvantages, but from my experiences I would recommend Component One.
HTH
None of the above, just use WPF Toolkit for DataGrid and VisualStateManager. It is not that hard to style the controls in WPF/Blend, plus it makes YOU more proficient and your code leaner.
P.S. Though, you might still use third-party reporting, since there no built in support for reporting in WPF.
If you are looking for a WPF Control Library there is the WpfDynamicUI Library.
It is an open source control building the user interface for the DataContext you provide.
It supports Charting, DataGrid, Map, Filtering, Paging, Nesting views and more...
Can be an alternative for building Line Of Business application.
PS: I am the coordinator of WpfDynamicUI
Well we are considering to move from WinForms to WPF, what pitfalls does WPF have? And we got component one's flexgrid is there any wpf grid that has the same functions? one nice thing with it is that you can implement your own draw method for the cells... It can merge cells print and save to many file formats..
In general, WPF development is very different from WinForms. You should expect it will take some time to learn the new technology (or you might even need to hire new developers =)).
WPF approach is in many ways better than WinForms' one: check out styles and triggers, data binding, control templating, eventing model.
I would recommend you to start exploring it, but wait for the WPF 4 (and the boring MSDN page) to start the actual migration, because it is going to be even better and close some of the very annoying gaps.
First of all, WPF works pretty different from Windows Forms and likely requires a different approach on how to structure and design the application. At least it works way better if you do it the way it was conceived.
As for single Windows Forms controls, this shouldn't be a problem. There is a WindowsFormsHost which enables you to include Windows Forms controls in WPF.
The change from winforms to WPF is not a change I'd reccommend unless you have specific requirements which WPF fulfills - WPF is not intended to be a replacement, simply an alternative which is more suited towards graphically rich applications.
If you do have a specific requirement then you also might want to consider embedding WPF controls into winforms applications, rather than converting your entire application.
The learning curve is slow to get going, but once you get the idea it all starts to make sense. We have "Pro WPF in C# 2008" book floating round the office and its been a great help. Of course most things get googled to find an answer, but to find out why something is done the way it is this book was a great hope - to me anyway.
There are some annoying features but its still WPF is still quite new. Like most things, if you come across a problem someone has likely come across it before and there is an answer out there!!
J
Take a look here for a datagrid: http://wpf.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=29117
The main hurdle with WPF is simply the huge amount of new stuff to learn (if you wish to use it properly). I'd think twice if you're on a tight schedule, but it might be worth it if you have 6 months to spare...
Speaking from just my experience, moving from Windows Forms to WPF took some re-learning. A few months into the transition most changes made total sense. WPF removes much of the frustration associated with using Windows Forms. It allows for a truly rich UI development experience especially when working in tandem with designers. I strongly recommend WPF Illustrated by Daniel Solis as a learning aid.
With reference to the grid, Syncfusion offers a WPF grid control that implements the features you have asked for. It implements true virtual mode with cell level customization, printing and export to multiple formats including Excel. Disclaimer - I work for Syncfusion.