I want to customize our installer which is based on NSIS. My question is could we create custom windows? Where I mean not customizing Modern UI or other built-in surface, but building a totally new look with custom Window header, buttons and other elements like list where all element have other state, and all of the states are represented with an animated item before the text.
So I want to develop my look from ground to the peak. This can be done somehow?
You can do this using a resource hacker of your choice, e.g. PE Explorer, XNResourceEditor, Resource Hacker FX or good old ResHacker. You'll have to make sure to use the same IDs for the controls, so you probably best start by editing on of the existing UIs.
Like idleberg said you have to edit one of the .exe resource files (in the Contrib folder) with a resource editor. To apply the new UI you have to use the ChangeUI instruction. You can change all pages or just a single page...
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I would like to be able to include a screenshot of a control inside my code, this way making control identification easier for new members on my team, is such a thing possible?
Maybe even the ability to just have the image on a network share with the path in a comment, and then have a plugin that when hovering over the link brings up the image?
EDIT (More detail):
I'm creating a test project, the application under test has over 1000 controls, some of them are similar in name and purpose, this can make it difficult at times for developers to reuse the API I am creating because the control name is simply not enough for quick identification of the control in use.
I use the word API very loosely too, none of this stuff will be consumed in web services, and it will always be white box with developers including a project reference and have direct access to the source code.
For every form in my application (The test one), I have a controls.cs file where all the controls for that form in the application under test are listed - This is where I want the hover to screenshot ability in the control definitions.
Another sure factor is that all developers will be using VS2013 (For now the base version), later this could be update 1 or 2.
As the initial author and senior developer on this project, these hover / image references (in the code) will be as useful to me personally as any 3rd party developers, or any later developers to join the initiative.
Thanks again, and I added a bounty!
I believe you can use Whole Tomato's free SourceLinks Visual Studio extension to do what you want - or at least get pretty close to it.
Built-in Functionality:
Out of the box, the extension allows you to specify comment patterns you want users to be able to take an action on. Once the patterns are specified, SourceLinks will highlight any occurrences of those patterns in the text editor. You will be able to double click the highlighted items and perform a pre-configured action (such as opening a link in an internal/external browser, or launching an executable).
You can see an example in the SourceLinks configuration dialog shown below:
(source: wholetomato.com)
So you could use this feature pretty painlessly to define a keyword such as Control Image and then put comments like the following in your code:
// Control Image: my_smart_list.jpg
SourceLinks would allow you double click this text, and you could have that configured to launch the image (using a file:// or http:// url depending on how and where your images are stored) either inside Visual Studio in it's internal browser, or in an external browser.
Custom Tooltips!
Now, if you want to put in some more effort into this and actually write some code, then SourceLinks allows you to create API Extensions to display custom tooltips when the user hovers over the marked text in the editor. The default installation of SourceLinks comes with sample API extensions that you can copy to create your own. See the article linked at the very top of the answer for more details on these samples.
This post in the SourceLinks forum informs us that SourceLinks expects the custom API Extension to return the tooltip value as FlowDocument XAML text. This is awesome news for us, because a FlowDocument can contain many types of elements, including formatted text, hyperlinks, and images.
Imanges in a Flow document can be specified both inline as well as externally.
Hope this helps!
I would use doxygen -- create the images somewhere in the source tree and use doxygen comments. You can embed the \image command in source comments (see docs) and doxygen will generate all the HTML documentation from there. I think doxygen is a great tool for documenting a codebase as you can generate the documentation directly from comments in the source and distribute or host the HTML separately.
Is it possible, (via some shell extension or similar) to customize the Windows shell (explorer.exe) to accomplish the following?
Make it, upon navigating to a predefined path:
draw over its surface - custom background, or even add custom forms for data input
display custom listview items based on the "virtual" path provided (something analogous to what explorer is doing when browsing a FTP repository - the items shown are not contents of a local folder, but rather some "virtual" items physically located on the FTP server)
The idea is to reuse the visage and navigation elements of Explorer without re-implementing the whole functionality and make it look native on all Windows versions for a remote file browser (file lists+files alone served by a custom web service).
I think you need to implement a Explorer Namespace Extension. There is some good information floating around on codeproject etc that you will probably need since the official documentation is not the best.
I was looking at the Firefox Add-ons Manager UI (pictured below) and really liked the expandable list used to show settings or properties for each add-on.
Firefox Add-ons Manager http://uploads.tech-buzz.net/Firefox3Beta3ComingonMonday_859/get_addons.png
I liked it enough to want to include something similar in one of my applications. The problem is, I don't know, exactly what the control is called (it doesn't seem to be "expandable list"), nor do I know if there is an implementation available for use in my own application (so I wouldn't have to reinvent the wheel.)
This isn't the first time that I've seen some cool piece of UI and wanted to incorporate it into something I'm working on, but have had no idea if I would have to design it from scratch. So I generally end up reworking my UI to use standard UI widgets to save time.
This got me thinking, is there some place that has a catalog of a bunch of UI widgets with names and what platforms/languages they are implemented for/in?
UPDATE
Turns out this control is called a Rich List Box, and it seems to only be implemented in XUL.
To answer your question, no, there isn't a universal catalog anywhere, though MSDN is as good a place as any to find definitions of most common UI elements.
The specific widget you ask about is generally called an accordian (wikipedia)
I have a custom task pane I've made in VSTO for Outlook 2007, but it needs a fair amount of screen real estate to be functional. I'd like to just take over the place of the Reading Pane, as it won't really be needed when this addon is active. It's also a really great spot since this addon relies on drag-and-drop from mail folders to this task pane, and the closer I can get it to the folder pane, the better.
Any way to replace the Reading Pane, or at least toggle it's visibility?
I dont think there is a way in OOM to do this .. I you can change the size of you region though.
I have seen it done though with add-in-express tool http://www.add-in-express.com but that may be 2 much work for you to change to that model.
Take a look at the Replacement or Replace All Form Region options. Both of these options allow to replace the display of form region.
The Replacement form region let's you build a custom first page of your own.
The Replace All form region let's you build all form pages.
These are not simple options as you must provide all Outlook capabilities the user expects. This is why the Adjoining form region option is the popular choice.
You can read more here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/dd492010(v=office.12).aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/bb206784.aspx
I talked to a friend of mine and he told me that it's possible to create an image in an image editor (gimp/photoshop) and then use it as a button . He said that's the way applications that have great GUIs do it.
He also said that there is a file describing which parts of the image make up the button.
Is this possible , or is he "crazy"? :)
This needs to be clarified with a language of choice, etc. In general, most languages (WinForms, Java AWT/SWT, etc) have an image or background image property that allows you to use images for buttons. There are even skinning frameworks that will let you use images for all controls in an easy-to-define manner.
If you are talking about HTML, there is a button input type that can allow an image to be used as a button for a form.
#Vhaerun
CodeProject is a good place to find lots of skinning libraries. I used this one a long time ago. Winamp is a great example of a skinned application, where users can actually create their own templates to completely change the look of the application without changing code whatsoever. Actually, most media players have some sort of skinning available.
You can do anything, especially since you have no constraints re language, environment, etc.
No he is not crazy, you can use images on almost all GUI tools instead of buttons, they are generally an image on the button, or in some cases you can put the image on the screen and have an onclick event assigned to it.
You haven't been very specific with your question so nobody is able to give you a definitive answer, but here's an attempt to do so without demeaning you:
It's quite common for graphics designers (using tools like photoshop, gimp, etc.) to participate alongside developers for both desktop and web based applications. Web based applications can easily capture information about when an image is clicked and frequently people will either design the button with the text in the image file itself, or use background pictures/borders with plain text on top. There is not standard, per se, on how this is accomplished on the web, but plenty of sites serve as an example (try using Firebug with FireFox to inspect other sites and see how they do things).
If the circumstance at hand is desktop oriented then the answer becomes much more complicated. Skinning is accomplished in many way and, depending on platforms and libraries being used, implementation specifics vary greatly. In it's most simple terms, most GUI frameworks (like GTK, QT, Windows Forms, Windows Presentation Foundation) include a basic picture control, and this control can usually process a "Click" event, which would allow it to function as a button, but if you want different states (pressed, disabled, etc.) you will have to invest more effort in such a thing; you also won't find this method suitable for replacing the rendering of all buttons in an application, but rather something you would do manually for each one, or write your own custom button control that uses your assets specifically.
In terms of a file describing different images that combine as described in the file to override the rendering of the button this would lead me to believe you are either working with an already existent application that is skinable (like Firefox or Winamp) or that he is speaking of some specific UI toolkit. I'm not aware of this functionality being generally available in most of the common system-level UI toolkits.
In the future you may wish to be more specific with your questions.
In HTML, you could do:
<input type="button" src="/path/to/image.png" />
Alternately, assigning an onclick event to an image causes that image to work similarly to a button:
<img src="/path/to/image.png" onclick="function(){doSomething();}" />
If you're talking HTML you can use <input type="image" src="myfile.png" />
Specifications here
Imagemaps I guess.
No seperate file describes the map, it is all part of the html document.
http://www.w3schools.com/TAGS/tag_map.asp