I am new to Windows Phone Programming. In my application, I Have a listbox which lists the phone contacts. Currently it is listed as a regular list with equal size for list items in the UI.I am looking to modify the front end like this :
I dont want to have different sizes /back ground color for each list items rather a fixed UI and let the lists scroll through it and the list item in the view, at any time, should be displayed as in the picture.
I dont expect any codes as answers but any examples are welcome too, just want to know using what feature this kind of functionality is possible so that i can do my reading!
Thanks,
Deepak
It would be difficult to modify an existing control (ListBox for example) to act like this, so your best bet would probably be an ItemsControl with its RenderTransform set as a TranslateTransform.
If you place a Rectangle (with Fill="Transparent") over the ItemsControl, you can attach handlers to the ManipulationStarted, ManipulationDelta, and ManipulationCompleted events to control the "scrolling" by setting the TranslateTransform's Y offset.
To resize the items in the list there are two options: a custom panel or manual setting.
Custom Panel
You could create a custom Panel implementation that will appropriately resize its Children based on a property you would create to represent the scroll position. Set the ItemsControl to use your panel, and either through binding or attaching a handler to the panel's Loaded event and keeping a pointer to the panel, update the aforementioned property from inside the ManipulationDelta handler.
Manual Setting
From inside of the ManipulationDelta handler, you can also calculate the various heights of the boxes and use MyItemsControl.ItemContainerGenerator.ContainerFromIndex to get the visual for each item and set its height.
I would suggest putting this all inside of a custom UserControl.
You may have issues with clipping using the TranslateTransform but hopefully this will get you started. Unfortunately, this looks like a rather difficult control to try making as your first windows phone project!
So Finally I did manage to find a way to do it.
First approach was as #Murkaeus suggested, Using UserControl and ManipulationDelta event handler. However for some reason the manipulationDelta event was triggered only for 2 finger gestures (Zoom, Pinch..etc), I have no clue why. And after some trying I had to give up on this.
The next approach was using Listbox itself. The source of the Listbox was set as the List( of Models objects) that I create after reading the contact information from phone. The height and color of the listbox item was bound to a property in my model named "scaleLevel" and was accordingly converted by implementing IValueConvertors to give predefined color and height values for different scale levels.
I created an attached property for the scrollviewer vertical offset like mentioned [here] (http://www.scottlogic.co.uk/blog/colin/2010/07/exposing-and-binding-to-a-silverlight-scrollviewer%E2%80%99s-scrollbars/)!
This event is triggered on change of the vertical offset and every time there is a scroll, I find out which listbox item to be enlarged and which reduced based current vertical offset.
Once I have this information, I change the property ("scaleLevel") of the affected items in the List (of Model) (which is bound to listbox height and color). This change is updated in UI using the INotifyPropertyChanged Event.
I have no idea if this the best way of doing it , but it works well and there is no considerable in updating the UI despite the processing involved.
I would like to hear your opinion about the implementation and any other solution which you feel will work better.
Related
I am creating an event screen like Outlook's. The issue I am coming across is that the autocompletebox I am using from Syncfusion doesn't automatically grow in height as more tokens are added.
The current workflow is exactly like outlooks. When the control is clicked on, it brings you to another page where you can select tokens. On return, the selected items populate the autocomplete circled below.
The approach I currently took is to have a listview. Scrolling is disabled for the listview since the page resides in a scrollview and nested scrollviews aren't recommended for xamarin. The height of the listview is dependent on the number of selecteditems.
I am wondering if there's another approach or control that would be more suited for my situation? Or if someone has come across a autocomplete control where the height will grow.
I am a rookie Cocoa guy. I need to design and implement a view which will show collection of labels on Mac OS using Xamarin. These labels will have a text and color associated with them. When shown inside the view, label should expand till it covers whole text and it will be shown with background and foreground colors.
I have attached the picture of this user control on Windows, you can see that labels inside the StackPanel are expanding till they cover the whole text. Hope this gives better idea about my ask.
The $64,000 question is "are these labels controls?" In other words, do you expect the user to click on these to do something, or are they just for display?
If your answer is "just for display", the solution is super simple: Use an NSTextField and programmatically add attributed text (NSAttributedString) to it. Attributed text attaches display properties to runs of text within the field; properties like "background color".
If you want these to be buttons that you can click on, then things get a lot more complicated.
Since you apparently want the button layout to "flow", you might look into imbedding buttons (well, button cells) into an NSTextField using attachments. This is normally how non-text content (say, an image) can be inserted, but with some fiddling it can actually be anything a control cell can draw. See How to insert a NSButton into a NSTextView? (inline).
Warning: this is not a "rookie" topic and will involve control cells and custom event handling.
If I were doing this, I'd probably just create NSButton objects for each label (choosing an appropriate style/look like NSRecessedBezelStyle), create a custom subclass of NSView to contain them, and then override the layout method to position all of the buttons the way I want.
To be thorough, I'd also override the intrinsic size methods so the whole thing could participate in auto-layout, based on the number and size of buttons it contained.
I have an app which allows users to send messages to each. The process is accomplished by saving the sent messages in a local SQLite database, while actually sending the messages to a database and using push notifications to send the message to the recipient's SQLite database. The set up I have works fine. However, what I am confused about is how to set up the actual interactive UI for the user (I am using XCode). I figured it should be a UITableView with each table cell representing a message. However, with this approach I run into a few requirements:
Variable TextView Sizes
Just as with regular iOS messaging, the TextView's size needs to be variable, adjusting its dimensions to fit all of the text in each message. I do not know how to accomplish this. I have a general understanding of how to generally vary sizes, but no clue how to dynamically have it based on the text within that view.
Variable TextView Positions
Again, just as with regular iOS messaging, the textview needs to be offset to either the right or left side depending on whether the sender was the user or who the are conversing with, respectively. I also do not know how to do this, because it changes the center of the textview.
Non-selectability
Xcode allows cells to be pressed. Handling what happens after this selection can be achieved by the didSelectRowatIndexPath tableView function. I can simply not implement this, but clicking on the cell causes it to turn darker to indicate it has been pressed. I would like to eliminate this while retaining the ability to, say, select some of the text and copy and paste it or whatever (just like messaging works normally on your phone).
Other Approaches?
This is the real meat of the question. I have considered the above approach because that is all that I have been able to come up with based on my limited experience with XCode UI elements. If there is a better approach (perhaps even a pod or framework) for this purpose I would love to hear it. I do not need the messaging UI to look amazing, just clean and crisp.
I suggest the following:
Variable TextView Sizes:
I assume you do use auto layout. If you don’t yet, please consider using it since it make life much easier!
If you use a UITableView, you can adjust the height of its UITableViewCells dynamically, depending on the actual content by using self-sizing cells. You can find a tutorial how to do this here.
Variable TextView Positions:
I assume you have a UITextView within a table view cell. In this case, you have to set auto layout constraints to the borders of the cell’s contentView. If you define a custom subclass of a UITableViewCell, you can define in this class 2 IBOutlet properties that are linked to say the left and the right layout constraints (e.g. var leftLayoutConstraint: NSLayoutConstraint). Then, you can set the constraint’s constant property as required when the cell is laid out, i.e. in the layoutSubviews function of the custom table view cell.
Non-selectability:
I am not sure what you mean by „I can simply not implement this“. Please make sure that you set the delegate property of the UITableView to the view controller where you want to handle cell selection. Selecting a cell changes the cells color by default, but you can change this: In the storyboard, select your table view’s prototype cell, and open Xcode’s utility pane (top rightmost button). Under „Table view cell“ you find „Selection“ that you can set to „None“.
I hope this helps!
In my WP8 application I use LongListMultiSelector and I would like to save it's scroll position when application is closed or tombstoned and then restore it when application is opened again. I will also need to scroll it programmatically to a specified item or specified position with animation when application is active.
The problem is that so far I can't find any methods on LongListMultiSelector that will allow me to scroll it with or without animation to a specified item or position. I also can't find methods that will allow me to get a list of all current items so I could choose of them to which one to scroll.
It can't be that scrolling is unmanageable on LongListMultiSelector so I'd like to get your advice on how I can get to this scroll functionality.
LongListSelector is kind of a "smart" controls. It means it has very complex behaviour but if you need to change it - better you shouldn't...
You have two options:
Write your own behavior on top of the content of the LongListMultiSelector. It contains primitives:ScrollBox control inside it.
Use standard LongListSelector and implement native ScrollTo method and your own multiselection. Multiselection is a simple task, ScrollTo is quite tricky since you basically can't scroll to position, only to item.
I am trying to give a ListBox drag and drop ordering functionality and I have hit a wall. I got it to work when I specify the list box items in xaml but it does not work when I bind to a list it no longer works because the items are no longer of a listboxitem type.
I found this code http://blog.dobaginski.com/josh/?p=52 that allows me to get the underlying ListBoxItem but I can't get the mouse move event to fire.
I have went through other tutorials but have not been able to find one that deals with a ListBox. Has anyone done this with a ListBox.
The events I am using are SelectedChange, MouseMove, and LeftMouseButtonUp (I think that name is right). I am not using LeftMouseButtonDown because I couldn't get it to fire.
As far as i know you cannot get at the listbox item container when using data binding. YOu could in Beta 1.
You also cannot set a mouse event handler in the style, you must use a data template, just so you know.
You will likely have to use the mouse move event from a parent element, probably the UserControl or main layout control that hosts the listbox.
State changes and animations need to be in the style though so... you still cant get at the listbox item, just the element inside it in the data template.
Oh and if doing drag and drop HitTest is now protected so that will make the Drop harder.
since today you can download the final 2.0 version of Silverlight with some add ons, check the Scott's web log
I've been trying to do the same thing in WPF,
but have only found many buggy implementations.
One person has guided me towards the blog of Beatriz Costa,
and from what I remember she's one of those rare geniouses,
so I suggest you read that as well... I know I will
Blog of Beatriz Costa