So today I can create a website using VS and drag and drop some ugly outdated buttons and form elements (e.g. that standard grey button, and square non styled text boxes and drop downs). I know you could replace a button with a graphic, but im no graphic designer. I want to be able to download and install some free plugin/extension that will give me a bunch of different "cool" looking options for buttons (and all the other standard form controls). So in short, I dont need new controls per say (though they are welcome and encouraged as well) but rather, I simply want a bunch of different "cool looking" visual options for the existing .net form controls, so I can make a website that doesn't look like its 90's.
I use vs 05 and 08.
for free controls have a look at codeplex:
http://dj.codeplex.com
http://yuidotnet.codeplex.com
for commercial level controls, Telerik, DevExpress, Infragistics...
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Visual Studio 2012 LightSwitch gives you a default of 5 or 6 screens such as: search, create new, etc..
I would like to create a very basic custom navigation/main menu screen. All this screen would contain is literally 6 vertical buttons in a maximized window (For starters and for simplicity of the question) and each button would pop up another screen.
Is there anything resembling the drag-and-drop of a regular Visual Studio 2012 application? I would basically like to create a new Screen Template called: "Navigation Menu" or something similar.
Thanks, DM.
You can only create a new Screen Template by creating a LightSwitch Screen Template Extension.
However it's not really a job for the faint hearted. I've created a number of extensions over the past couple of years, & I regard the Screen Template Extension to be the hardest to do. I understand what goes into designing a Screen Template. It can be quite code-intensive, depending on what you want the template to create for you. I have a couple of screen templates that I want to create for my own needs, but I keep putting them off.
I don't want to put you off, just give you a heads up about what you're in for, if you do decide to create your own screen template extension.
One question though. Are you wanting to reuse this screen, either in the same application, or in other applications? If ther answer is "no", then creating a screen template extension would be overkill.
If you're only wanting one of these screens, to do what you described, all you have to do is add a RowsLayout control to a screen, then add one RowsLayout controlfor each navigation "button" that you want on the screen. Use the Add Button context menu option (right-click the RowsLayout control) to add a button. Set the size etc to what you want, & set the RowsLayout controls Horizontal Alignment setting to Center.
The buttons won't be all that "sexy", they'll just be larger versions of the same buttons that you'll see anywhere else in the application (except for size, if you decide to change that). The main advantage is that you can do it, quickly, & out of the box.
Or you could do something like in this article, Course Manager VS 2012 Sample Part 6 – Home Screen, if you want to improve the look of the screen.
I am just finishing my latest app but I am straggling with the About page implementation.
How should I create About Dialog or About Page in Windows Phone?
I do not want to use just a plain page with text, because it doesn't look professional. Is there a standard way of doing this? An About page/dialog provided within the framework, for example?
There are many ways you can do this. The best would be if you could download a few of the popular free apps to see how exactly have they implemented it, to get a few ideas.
I prefer to go in one of the following 2 directions:
Custom styled page, that includes icons, developer details, some legal details (which controls did you use, under which licenses etc.) You can even use a pivot page, and then split the details about you, and legal details (and any other details) to multiple pivot items.
Use a popup from Coding4Fun toolkit. Scroll down for a sample of how it looks.
Can someone point me to an article or tutorial on using custom controls in Visual Studio Lightswitch? I'm trying to add a rich text box to a page, linked to a string property. When running the app, sometimes the field will show up, sometimes it won't. If it does show the width of the field is small, about 2 characters, but will expand when text is pasted inside. Saving doesn't work, though.
I'm not even sure about whether or not I'm allowed to use controls like these in a Lightswitch app, even though custom controls are obviously supported. Are the custom controls restricted to a certain type or set?
Thanks in advance for any assistance.
W.
Have a look at the following example, http://lightswitchhelpwebsite.com/Blog/tabid/61/EntryId/10/LightSwitch-Student-Information-System-Part-3-Custom-Controls.aspx
Also the Training Kit has examples of Custome Controls included.
There is also this tutorial:
Creating A LightSwitch Custom Silverlight Control
http://lightswitchhelpwebsite.com/Blog/tabid/61/EntryId/2/Creating-A-LightSwitch-Custom-Silverlight-Control.aspx
I'm trying to get to grips with customising a Ribbon Bar for a converted A2003 app. I'm trying to work out how to use my own custom images on button controls in the ribbon. Can anyone point me to an example for Access 2007 that can do this pls?
Please check this MSDN article (Adding Custom Dynamic Menus to the Office Fluent User Interface) and see if it helps you. Furthermore I would point you to the specifying image resource MSDN article, because you need different sized images for different sized buttons - read the bottom of my post to make it easier on you.
I believe there was also custom images within the official MS example on ribbon extensibility with Access 2007 - I hope this example is sufficient, it helped me a great lot.
My personal favorite is just using a graphical UI editor, such as the "Custom UI Editor Tool". With it you just click a button to insert an image and it works (as explained in this tutorial). Even better as the Custom UI Editor is the IDBE Ribbon Creatror - my personal tool of choice. A shareware version is available from the website.
I have a working example class object you can use that makes this a good deal less code.
http://www.members.shaw.ca/albertKallal/Ribbon/ribbon.htm
The above lets you use a very much like previous style code approach. So, to set a picture for a ribbon, you can go:
meRib("Button1").Picture = "HappyFace.png"
The same download has a working form in which some images in the ribbon change from choices made on the form.
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