We are looking at implementing a Silverlight project to provide users with visualization of events over time and so I have started to look for a control that will let me do so. The inspiration for our project is a visualization The Guardian has done: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2011/mar/22/middle-east-protest-interactive-timeline
So, can anyone think of a control/project that will allow us to do something like this?
Not quite as visually impressive as the Guardian example, but there's a WPF & Silverlight Timeline Control on Codeplex.
The Microsoft Expression Gallery might also have some additional examples.
Related
Has anyone tried or successfully implemented interactivity in the charts of the Silverlight Charting Toolkit? I want to grab a column for instance and move it up, so that the bound value is increased through my interaction with the chart.
I know there are commercial alternatives out there but really would like to know if it is possible with the toolkit or only achievable with disproportionate effort.
Thanks in advance.
This doesn't directly answer your question, but since the question has been sitting since March, I'll post it anyway.
Try Telerik's RadChart control. It supports a lot more than the standard stuff.
Telerik has a wide variety of interactive charts including this one that you can play around with. You may want to start with this page and click the "Other Chart Examples" drop down to see what they have to offer.
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.
I want to create an automated UI test that will test my syncfusion grid. My problem is that the recorder can't recognize this control (or any syncfusion control). I've searched a lot in the internet but I couldn't find any extension so the recorder will recognize my controls (I'm using WinForms, not WPF!), or at least a way to extend the recorder abilities so syncfusion's controls will be recognized somehow.
Is there any easy way to extend the recorder? Or is there any extension available?
Or maybe can I get the grid object from the WinClient that the recorder generates?
Thanks!
Start your program. Run the Spy++ utility. Type Ctrl+F to start the finder tool and drag the bulls-eye onto your form. Ok, Synchronize and have a look-see at the windows that are visible in the tree. If you see regular Windows Forms controls, like a Button or a Label, but not any of the SyncFusion controls then you've probably found the source of the problem.
Component vendors that try to improve .NET controls typically do so by creating 'window-less' controls. They are not really controls, they don't derive from the Control class and don't have a Handle property. They use the surface of the parent to draw themselves, making them look just like controls. The .NET ToolStripItem classes do this. And this is also the approach WPF uses.
The big advantage is that they render quickly and support all kinds of effects that regular controls can't support, like transparency, rotation and anti-aliased window edges. The big disadvantage is that the kind of tool that you are using suddenly gets noddy and can't find the control back. Because they work by finding the Windows window back on your form, there is no window for them.
This is a hard problem to solve, the 'control' exists only in memory and there's no good way for a tool to find it back. Using Accessibility is about the only other way for such a tool to find a control that I can think of. Which would have to be implemented by the control vendor first, a somewhat obscure feature that gets easily overlooked. You really do need the help of the vendor to find a workaround for this. Shouldn't be a problem, that's why you paid them the big money.
This is Rajadurai from Syncfusion. Thank you for your interest in Syncfusion Products. To make UI Test Automation recognize Syncfusion grids(WinForms), some internal support need to be provided in grid whose implementation is in progress and about to be completed. Please submit an incident through Direct-Trac for any further related inquiries in the following link.
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You can also contact us through support#syncfusion.com. We are happy to assist you.
Regards,
Rajadurai
I'm looking for a WPF prism with ribbon application samples and tutorials. I have found many that cover prism or ribbon but only a few sources provide any information about implementating those two together in one application. No course code usually in available tough. An example with a few simple modules and a classical ribbon tab control would be perfect for me to start.
Thanks for any help.
Regards,
Enzo.
Edit:
I should add that by combining the two I want to be able to load different modules depending on the ribbon tab selected by user.
You can find some info on a customized region adapter for the WPF Ribbon Preview here.
Regarding the loading of modules on demand in Prism, here is another link to MSDN, covering the topic.
David Veeneman wrote a nice article about Ribbon & Prism on CodeProject
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WPF/ViewSwitchingAppsPrism4.aspx
It includes RegionAdapter for Ribbon .
There is "Southridge Hands-On Labs" on Codeplex (download on WPF futures page). It is quite extensive, but documentation and source code are not in sync (it looks they updated labs source, but not accompanying documentation), so it can be a pain sometimes to get what is going on.
It is based on Microsoft's WPF Ribbon Preview library.
Edit:
I am not aware about any tutorial that covers both. You can check series of videos on Prism and Silverlight by Mike Taulty. There is also source code for application made in last video.
Then you can combine knowledge from Southridge labs and this Prism tutorial.
I ran into a similar problem this weekend and after much reading and searching came up with this code that I posted for review
https://codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/429/mvvm-wpf-ribbon-v4-with-prism
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)