I'm using Visual Studio 2008, C++ and use resource editor to to create my dialogs, and I just can't seem to make groupbox actually group the controls inside it so that I could reposition the groupbox (runtime or design time) and make all of its children to move as well. It seems it isn't actually parent of these controls, but how to achieve it?
Thanks.
You don't ue the Resource Editor for building WinForms applications. Create a new Visual C++/CLR/Windows Forms Application and you'll get a form called Form1. That's WinForms. The Resource Editor is used for plain old Win32 applications and the groupbox there cannot be parent to other controls.
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Is it possible to create a WPF control in C++/CLI, like in WinForms? If so, is there a sample/doc somewhere going through the process, since there is no such project type in vs2010.
Thanks
Yes, it's possible, but you will have to write code to create all your subcontrols and set their properties, because C++/CLI and XAML don't work together. It's very similar to writing a WinForms UI without the aid of the Forms Designer.
Start just by subclassing one of the WPF controls, perhaps Panel.
Must every control in the Visual Studio WinForms toolbox descend from Control?
Does Visual Studio support window-less controls?
Every control you add to the Toolbox in Visual Studio:
must1 descend from Control, which is a wrapper around a windowed control.
Unfortunately, Windowed controls are very "heavy"; having a lot of them, especially nested, causes performance in WinForms to suffer.
In the past i've dealt with the problem by creating aggregate custom controls. The custom control internally contains other window-less controls:
an image (windowless version of a PictureBox)
title label (windowless version of a Label)
subtitle label (windowless version of a Label)
border (windowless version of a Panel)
These are useful to mitigate performance problems in WinForms, but they're stuck inside code.
i would like to do what other development environments allow, is a version of Control that doesn't create a Windows window. i would like the ability for the Visual Studio toolbox to accept **window-less* controls.
i know that if i really wanted window-less controls: i should switch to WPF. But that's overkill.
Does Visual Studio WinForms support window-less controls?
1 or not
Yes and No.
First, check out this article from the venerable Raymond Chen: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2005/02/11/371042.aspx
Yes. You are welcome to create "controls" that do not derive from Control. I have created several windowless controls in my application that natively support clicking, layering, etc., I draw them to an offscreen buffer, and then paint them directly on some parent Form or Control (such as a PictureBox). This is straightforward to do but not simple, as you will need to manage everything yourself in code.
No. Any windowless controls will not be supported in the Windows Forms designer for any of the Control-derived controls designers (such as placing them on a Panel or Form) so you won't have drag-and-drop form design.
As Hans has pointed out, the ToolStrip and MenuStrip (a windowless control) are such examples. Notice that when you create a new MenuStrip on a Form, the MenuStrip is placed in the Component tray underneath the form. The MenuStrip has a custom set of Designer classes associated with it to support the custom painting and "Type Here" functionality, as well as the dialog boxes to add and remove menu items. Note that the "child" windowless controls, such as the ToolStripButton, are not available in the ToolBox for drag-and-drop support directly onto the form - only the custom designer knows about it. The custom designer for the MenuStrip also supports selecting the child windowless controls so that you can edit the properties of each item in the Properties window.
I can't imagine this is suitable for your situation (unless you are creating some controls for resale), but if you are very determined, you can create designer support in much the same way for your set of windowless controls:
Create a class that derives from Component that will be used to manage your Windowless controls. For example, you could call this class WindowlessWidgetManager. After you compile, this control will be in your toolbox. The WindowlessWidgetManager can contain a collection of your windowless controls, and provide painting and other UI support for a canvas such as a Form or PictureBox.
Create a designer class that derives from ComponentDesigner that supports things such adding and removing your custom controls at design time. For more information, see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.componentmodel.design.componentdesigner(v=VS.90).aspx
This is a very lengthy process with a number of caveats, but if that is what you wish to achieve, the functionality is there.
I have created the WPF user control and WPF window in class library project. Controls are public.
These controls are available for other project of the same solution. I can see them in the toolbox of the VS2010 when i add project reference from the WPF application project.
However, when i create some WPF application project outside the solution and add reference to the my user control library project, the controls do not appear in the toolbox! (My applications XAML file is open when I try to see them in toolbox to drag-drop on the application's main XAML)
What makes the controls avilable to the outside world when their assembly is referenced by the consumers?
Try right clicking on the toolbox and selecting Choose Items From that form click browse and select your DLL. That should put the controls in the toolbox for you.
I think the problem is that in your new WPF project you need to set an XML namespace where you reference your user control library. Then you can use your controls in the XAML.
For example :
thats an xml namespace definition in the XAML:
xmlns:toolkit="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Phone.Controls;
assembly=Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Toolkit"
And how you can use a control from this control library
< toolkit:ListPicker />
I hope this will help you.
Right click inside the toolbox and select "Show All".
Is it possible to have a project containing both Winforms and WPF?
Say a WinForm project that is transformed step by step(form by form) in a WPF one, will be possible to have a Winform opening on a button, and a WPF one opening on a other button?
Yes. You have to pick one technology to display each physical window and control in your app, but there's no reason why you can't mix and match.
For example:
A WinForms window can show a WPF window.
A WPF window can show a WinForms window.
A WinForms window can contain WPF content (see the ElementHost control).
A WPF window can contain WinForms controls (see the WindowsFormsHost control).
This works great.
One can have WPF windows in Windows Forms and Windows Forms windows in WPF
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms745781.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.integration.windowsformshost.aspx
Adding Winforms to WPF projects can be done smoothly (directly from the "Add new item" menu), but there is not straight option to add a WPF window to a Winforms project. Still, I handled to do it following these steps:
Add a WPF User Control (this option is available on the "Add new
item" menu) and then convert it into a WPF Window. Modify the XAML
changing the UserControl parent tag to Window, and remove the
inheritance from UserControl (all of this is explained in this link).
Add a reference to System.Xaml.dll. See this link.
Add a reference to System.Windows.dll (I found it on my computer on this path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework.NETFramework\v4.5. Be aware it might be different in yours). See this link.
What you might be looking for is the ElementHost control. What it lets you do is take WPF content and host it in a Windows Forms window. More details are here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms745781.aspx
There is also a control that lets you do the reverse: host Windows Forms content from within WPF:
http://nayyeri.net/host-windows-forms-controls-in-wpf
Between the two, you can move the 'dividing line' between WPF and Windows Forms with some degree of flexibility.
There is at one caveat you'll need to keep in mind. Windows Forms works internally in terms of HWND's... a window managed by the legacy Windows window manager (which handles the z-order). WPF doesn't do this... A WPF tree is typically rendered into a single HWND', and it's WPF that manages things like z-order. What this means to you is that z-order doesn't always work the way you expect it to, and there are things you can't do with hosted Windows Forms controls that you can do with traditional WPF elements. (There is actually a way to solve this, but it involves periodically rendering the HWND into a memory bitmap, rendering that bitmap into a WPF surface, and then redirecting events directed to the WPF surface to the underlying HWND. This is powerful, but tricky and difficult to get right.)
I see no objection to do that.(I have in WinForms Application WPF windows)
Many of the examples used MessageBox.Show which is part of the Windows.Forms.
Of course you must rewrite all windows, not only controls.
I want to create control that seems and works like the Solution Explorer of Visual Studio.
I mean not the functionality of solution explorer, the control should be seems like that control. That means, server explorer, toolbox, error List,... All these controls will pop-out when we put mouse and pop-in when we leave. We can lock and unlock those controls also.
So can anyone help me, to get the solution for this problem.
Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!
I am assuming you are using C#/VB.NET for development. The dockpanel suite will provide a docking framework for an application. Basically in terms of dockpanel, it is the forms which can be docked on the application using drag and drop like visual studio.
So create a treeview control in the form and dock it to the parent. You can populate the treeview control based on file directories or any specific needs of your project. Please note in dockpanel you create a form by not inheriting from Form class but from DockContent class. Documentation will give you more insight of how to create applications. It has a good example along with the source code in which it simulates the all the visual studio panes. It also provides and option to save the position of various docks which can act as a user preference. For eg, you may like to position solution explorer on left side whereas i may want it on right side. this get stored in a conf file which gets read next time when you start the application.
Incase you using MFC, then visual studio 2008 SP1 provides you with docking framwork and within that use the treeview control.
XAML also provides a docking framework. But i am not sure, you need to verify.
Win32 API does not have any native docking framework.