I'd like to develop an application for the Windows Store using Visual Studio 2012 and C#.
However when I create an empty project (XAML) having "Windows Store" selected I get a metro-app. I want an ordinary XAML-application because my application works only as a windowed application (the user wouldn't benefit from the Metro-interface at all).
So how can I create a default XAML-application without Metro but still be able to put it in the Windows Store?
You just build the desktop application like you normally would. Don't pick Windows Store app or you'll end up with a metro app build on WinRT.
You'll need to run the certification kit against your application and submit it to MS. You'll also still need a company account to submit to the store.
You can find more information here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsstore/archive/2012/06/08/listing-your-desktop-app-in-the-store.aspx
You'll just have to provide your own Style Templates for the controls you wish to use. The same way you would have done for any WPF/SL projects if you didn't want to use the standard out-of-the-box themes. So say for instance you want to use a Button but you don't want it to look like one of the default Light/Dark theme Buttons. Plop one on your design area, right click and go to Edit Template -> Edit a Copy and use Blend to style it however you want it to look. Unfortunately, this means you'll have to Theme all your controls to create your Theme where everything works together.
Which is one cool thing about how these environments are setup, you can just about literally make anything look however your imagination wants it to look. There's plenty of tutorials on the web on how to use Blend to customize Control Style Templates. Hope this helps.
Related
I need to create a shoebox-style native Windows app in C++. A good example of such a UI would be CleanMyPC:
I've tried the various options of the MFC App wizard in Visual Studio 2019 to see what that would give, but it's either document-based (SDI), or too limited (dialog-style). The closest was an empty Win32 app, which just displays a menu bar and a blank window beneath it. At least it matches the Windows style. But that would mean using bare Win32 API, which doesn't seem like a good idea.
Can a UI like in the screenshot be created with MFC? If so, would that be a reasonable approach? Can MFC be effectively used in a non-document-style, non-dialog-style UI like this?
I understand that there's heavy customization of the controls going on in the screenshot; the question is can it be done with MFC?
It looks like the left sidebar and the right details areas could be made of customized list controls. I'll be looking into how a dialog-based sample app arranges the window, so that no document stuff is involved, but without immediate termination on a button click.
I have a potential requirement of modifying the Windows 10 Start Menu structure. I know that you can customize the groups and tiles: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/deploymentguys/2016/03/07/windows-10-start-layout-customization/
My question is if there is any possible way (through API or any other option) that allows to, instead of only pinning windows desktop applications, display your custom code.
Example: we have a group called My work which pins windows applications, but we also have a group called Discover which displays custom code, not windows 10 apps.
I think it is not achievable, but want to give it a try and ask the community. Thanks a lot in advance!
Modify start menu should not be a feature of common UWP development. The start menu should only be controlled by customer themselves. So it's not possible for you to think about develop this kind of feature.
And as you've already see that OEM can modify OEM group. Actually you can find related info from here.
For a while now I've disliked the default folder browser dialog in Windows:
Granted, at least it has the text box with autocomplete; but if you go strictly with the tree view, it can take a lot of clicks and scrolling to get where you want!
It'd be nice if I could develop a superior (to my taste) UI and have this override my system's default. That is, whenever an application requests a native folder browser from Windows on my system, I'd like to be able to define my own such control so that it will be displayed instead of the built-in one. Naturally I could/would then also offer this to others to install on their systems if they like.
Does Windows provide an API to override this particular feature? Maybe via a shell extension or something like that? (I've never done anything that interacts directly with the OS like that; so I don't even know where to start looking.)
Basically I am asking if this OS-level functionality is configurable within Windows.
An app called FlashFolder seems to have done that, and has a lot of good reviews (meaning it at least works for someone) but doesn't work for me at all on Windows 8. If you have an earlier version of Windows perhaps you'll have more luck.
I want to make an app that shows pictures. But I want to be able to zoom in and out with gestures. I fixed this by including a toolkit into my project. But my actual question is, can I use or is there a control that's already created for me to show pictures like the picture library of the WP7 phone itself. I thought there wasn't but the Facebook app has a similar way of showing the pictures. Did Facebook rewrite the whole thing or is there a control somewhere that someone made?
The SlideView control in Telerik's RadControls for Windows Phone sounds like what you're looking for.
Have you tried a MultiScaleImage control? It's designed to work with multiple layers, but if you only specify one layer, it might suit what you're trying to do.
Previously I used to piddle around with VB6 to develop a couple of personal projects. Following my upgrade to Windows 7, I've decided to piddle about with vb.net Express Edition 2010.
If I wanted my VB6 application to blend in with the visual style of Windows, I would use the code and techniques described here. In short, I would use a Manifest file and a couple of calls within the application and most of the elements would look similar to the XP theme applied. If it was run on 2000, 95 or 98 then it would look like a standard Windows app. All was good.
Now I've moved onto vb.net, I've written a simple "Hello, world" application but I have absolutely no idea on how to make it look like the Windows 7 theme (eg. the font matches the system font and the widgets are styled correctly).
Just changing the font is a hack and will look out of place on machines that are set-up differently or run a different version of Windows where the default font is different.
How do I ensure my application matches the applied Windows theme irrespective of the version of Windows?
A lot of this is automatic if you create a Windows Forms app. They will (mostly) use the standard native Windows controls which draw themselves with the theme colors. But there are exceptions:
the Form item template uses a default Font named Microsoft Sans Serif. You'll have to change it to Segoe UI to match the Vista/Win7 default. This is only necessary for the Form class, all controls you put on it will automatically inherit that font. On an XP machine, the Windows font mapper will notice that the font is missing and automatically fall back to MSS.
the MenuStrip class uses custom rendering to draw the menu items. It tries to match the Windows style when you change the RenderMode property to System but the way it draws doesn't match the Win7 style. Right-click the toolbox, Choose Items and select MainMenu. That's a legacy version that does use Windows to draw menus so it produces the proper theme appearance.
A very similar problem for ToolStrip. It's legacy version is ToolBar. This is a hard one to swallow, it doesn't use a rebar which make the tool bar look flat and ugly.
There are similar problems in WPF but with the added problem that WPF doesn't use any of the standard Windows controls. And gets it wrong in subtle places.