I have been asked to build an application where I can drag and drop few WebControls onto the WebPage designer surface.
So far I have read some articles on .NET Framework Design-Time architecture, like, MSDN Article: Hosting WinForms Designers, Developer Function Article etc.
But I can't a find a way to host WebForms designer. The only open source implementation that I could find was Mono Develop ASP.NET Visual Designer.
But in mono they have used GTK# & Gecko etc to host the designer. I can't find a way to do the same using WinForms.
Please suggest me what should I do. Give me some pointers. Should I go ahead and implement it using GTK# and Gecko?
PS: My requirement is not very huge. I need just a way to drag and drop simple web controls and save the page.
Creating a designer host and hosting the controls is easy. The hard part is the HTML design surface, to let you actually see the controls, select, drag-n-drop, resize, etc. There is nothing built into the .NET/ASP.NET framework to do this for you.
I built AspNetEdit - and pretty much abandoned it because it was too difficult to build a reliable HTML design surface designer with Mozilla/Gecko.
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 need a treeview in .net with supported multi selection.
A own implementation in wpf or winforms ( this two don't have multi selection out of the box !? ) is a no go, i need the multi selection visible in the ms ui automation framework.
Do anyone know if this is possible with the win32 treeview ? Or know a way how to implement multiselection in wpf / winforms which is also visible in the automation framework ?
Technically, even the awesome Infragistics controls are visible to the UI automation framework, but I think you need to use the 'core classes' with the legacy msaa pattern (that is what I do with Infragistics and Ui Automation).
As far as something more friendly and free, I'd suggest trying this:
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/20581/Multiselect-Treeview-Implementation
I use it and have been very happy with it. I don't actually automate it, but use it elsewhere. I would think that it is UI Automation friendly, though, based on looking at the code a bit.
I need to create a designer for Silverlight in WPF and I’m thinking of a few options
Use a WebBrowser control,
display the content there and
communicate Silverlight using the
JavaScript Bridge. Not sure if this
will be enough for the scenarios I
need to support (see below). This is what KaXaml is doing. SilverlightSpy uses a a more sophisticated WebBrowser control, but I'm not sure how they communicate with Silverlight.
Communicate using Sockets
between the Host and Silverlight.
Host the Silverlight runtime (not in
a browser), but directly using
AgCore.dll. Similar to what sllauncher does for OOB. I imagine
this is what Blend/VS are doing.
Do whatever Blend or VS are doing
which.
I obviously don’t want to go as far as VS and Blend, but I need to support drag and drop of some controls as well as grouping, changing the layout, moving controls in the design surface and obviously updating the Xaml as a result of this actions.
Any ideas, recommendations or pointers on the best way to create a Silverlight Designer in WPF?
SharpDevelop 4 has a WPF based editor for WPF and Silverlight -> http://www.icsharpcode.net/opensource/sd/
Desktop GUI builder tools such as Qt Designer and Glade let me easily design a resizable interface with menus, shortcuts, tab order, status bar, etc
Is there an equivalent tool for the web?
I am not after building a typical web interface where you scroll down to view all the content, but a fullscreen interface with menus at the top and status bar at bottom.
Here is an (awesome) example fullscreen web app: http://desktop.sonspring.com/
The Flash Platform would probably give you a more familiar environment to develop for. The Flex framework provides a complete framework for developing sophisticated applications and Flex Builder (built on top of Eclipse) gives a UI 'designer' to build large parts of your app using the drag & drop philosophy.
For the kind of interfaces you're describing, ExtJS is quite a nice library. While there is not a GUI interface designer yet, there is reportedly one in the pipeline.
While the widget library is available under GPL3 (which caused some controversy), it's also available via commercial licenses. The interface builder will cost some kind of money.
Check out the demos, there is a desktop sample very similar to the one you referenced in your question.
Is there a way to get textboxes, labels and other wpf controls in xna that supports margins, etc that flexes for window size?
You might give CeGui a shot.
If your game needs advanced GUI capabilities, CeGui# might just hit the nail on the head for you. Marketese aside, this is a seriously good GUI library with Buttons, ListBoxes, Scrollbars, ProgressBars, Sliders, ComboBoxes and more.
To access the Xna version you'll need to check out the latest copy from the project's SVN and load up CeGui-XNA.sln.
There are other options listed in this thread, but I have no idea how well any of the others work (and it probably isn't a comprehensive list anymore).
The official GUI systems FAQ thread in the XNA Forum:
What GUI systems are there for the XNA framework?
CEGUI# is powerful, but it doesn't support the Xbox 360 (eg. its design doesn't include responding to game pad input) - a major overhaul would be required to refit it to be usable with something else than mouse and keyboard.
Not exactly what you're looking for, but here is an example of getting winforms GUI elements mixed in with XNA 3d content:
http://creators.xna.com/en-US/sample/winforms_series1
Check out SQUID: http://www.ionstar.org/
It's a really clean, fast, and engine independent UI system. I've worked with it extensively and really enjoy using it. The download includes sample code for XNA 3.1, Truevision3D, and SlimDX.
It is possible to embed an XNA game in a WPF form (google: XNA in WPF) if you target only Windows system. You will then have access to all the controls available in XPF for your 2D GUI.
If you also target Xbox 360 or Zune; you must make your own GUI library :(