I want to create an application to run on a Windows 7 PC with a touch screen that is a sort of toolbox with large icons optimized for touch screens.
I need it to include a file browser with a hard coded path. That way I can auto launch the application and they will be taken to the folder right away. I would also like a section where I can put "Useful Applications" shortcuts so that they do not have to go through the start menu or the desktop.
Can someone guide me where I can start learning how I can do this? I would most likely code in C#
Get started with Windows Runtime apps. You can write a Windows Runtime app in a variety of languages, such as C# or C++ with XAML, C++ with DirectX, and JavaScript with HTML/CSS. Now you can easily create apps for Windows devices and Windows Phone from a single project.
https://dev.windows.com/en-us/getstarted
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I see some features on windows 10 that are a copy of Android intent concept.
For example, when opening games, they open the Xbox programs by triggering an event ms-gamingoverlay. The flow have a windows native UI to select the application to be used, or search for one at the proprietary-application-store.
What exactly are those called in windows development literature?
I have a resource DLL for a Windows Delphi app. I want to port this to macOS, and eventually to iOS (for iPad only, not iPhone). I have yet to dip my toes into developing outside of the VCL (I don't even own a Mac yet, though I know I will need one eventually). The FireMonkey stuff, no problem (yet). I just wonder what approach to take to port a Windows resource DLL to other platforms.
For Firemonkey, you can user the dialog box in menu "Project / Resource and images".
This help page will give you code sample to use it in your program :
http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/Tokyo/en/Resource_Files_Support
I am currently evaluating building an app that uses the Windows Store architecture (formerly known as Metro). This app will target not just Windows Phone devices, but also Windows 10 desktop.
One function of the app would be to drag-and-drop files onto the app from File Explorer. An example scenario would be to click-and-hold on a JPEG image and drag it into the app, which would then process the file. This would provide the user with another option instead of going through file dialogs.
I can find plenty of resources about using drag-and-drop inside Windows Store apps, but it seems there's no information about drag-and-drop from a "normal" Windows desktop app, such as File Explorer.
With Windows 10, Store apps are promoted to proper windows, rather than fullscreen apps, so this functionality seems to be a bit more useful in this environment.
This comment seems to suggest that it isn't supported, but is dated two years ago and refers to Windows 8. Is this still the case with Windows 10?
Here is video tutorial and simple example on GitHub.
I'm the author of a Windows application that's been around for years. The app uses the wxWidgets UI library. For the newest version, we upgraded to the Microsoft c++ compiler in Studio 10 and to the latest Windows SDK library. We did not change much else in the app. Now, several users have reported that after a period of time running the app, the menus go crazy. All of the users reporting the problem are running on Windows XP. The menus either get huge, filling the screen, and have a giant italic font with strikethroughs. Or they get really small, so that the only thing shown are up and down arrows, suggesting the rendering code thinks the screen real estate is too small to display anything else.
You can find example screen shots here:
Once the menus go crazy, all menus are affected, except the standard Windows and MDI menus. The only way to recover is to restart the app.
The code in the app and wxWidgits is a thin layer on top of the standard Windows API. Once the menus are created, afaik Windows manages the rendering.
Any ideas what's going wrong?
I've got a .NET 2.0 Windows desktop application (time-sheets) which i develop and wanted to add a Gadget interface to it (so that app runs hidden and is controlled via the gadget).
What is the easiest way to get my gadget to communicate to my app?
An idea that i had was to have a built-in web server inside the app, and the gadget controls communicates with the app using ajax. However i'm hoping there's a simpler solution.
You didn't specify what technology the gadget and app were written with, so it's hard to answer. Assuming you can use .NET, WCF with a named-pipes binding would be very simple. Just a few lines of code to set it up.
We use win32 APIs in one of our gadgets' ActiveX control to communicate with other instances of the same gadget. Unfortunately, I can't give you the code (because I don't have permission and I don't write the .net stuff) but it boils down to using a window (in your case the application window) as a server and the gadget ActiveX control as the client and use the SendMessage function.
You can see an example of using COM interop with windows desktop gadgets at http://www.codeproject.com/KB/gadgets/GadgetInterop.aspx
NB: make sure the interop assembly is in the application's directory and NOT the gadget directory, otherwise you'll run into problems when updating/uninstalling the gadget.