GUI for creating fullscreen web applications - user-interface

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.

Related

Can such a UI be created with unmanaged Visual C++ and MFC?

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.

Creating a Custom Silverlight Designer in WPF

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/

Where do I find the "Collapsible Panel" Cocoa control in Interface Builder?

I'm trying to add a collapsible panel to a panel I added in the Interface Builder, similar to the one found in Office 2008 and XCode itself.
This is the collapsible panel for those that don't know it:
OS X collapsible panel http://grab.by/3Hqv
Any idea how I can add this to my project? Google hasn't been of much help.
This is most often referred to as a "disclosure view" or "disclosure panel" and usually has to come with an intelligent container view (that grows/shrinks/scrolls correctly with multiple disclosure subviews). There is no such control as part of the API. Most developers roll their own while some use third-party open source.
The Omni Frameworks have one such control that works very well (including "tear-off" panels, etc., if I recall correctly). The drawback: it's a large framework and has a lot of other stuff in it as well.
InspectorKit is another. It's more focused (just the control itself and an IB plugin), but the last incarnation I tested did have a few UI issues with the Interface Builder plugin.
I've also written a framework for handling this: SFBInspectors

in interface builder what is accessibility menu for?

with the newer sdk we can see a menu named accessibility in identity inspector.What does it do and how we can use it in application?
That menu is part of the accessibility interface, which allows you to make your application more usable by those with disabilities.
Through the various components, including attributes like labels to hook in to the VoiceOver system, traits to describe a control's position and state, hints to describe the uses of a control, zoom, high contrast modes, and much more, you can significantly improve the accessibility of your application (in addition to providing some benefits to those who happen to like these features even if they have no disability).
The Accessibility Programming Guide for iPhone OS provides all the details and a great jumping off point to get started with accessibility in iPhone development.

GUI framework for automatic resizing

I want to build a desktop app where the size of both the window and the content is resized automaticly according to the resolution of the monitor. I know it can be done easily with the docking features of .NET Forms, but my customer insists on going with Linux so I can't use it.
I tried Flex & Air, but the content is not resized automaticaly when I put the app in fullscreen or in another resolution (the app goes full screen but I still have tiny buttons). Now, I am looking at Qt and Gtk...
Is there a GUI framework that can do that? I don't care about the programming language.
Also, since the app will go in a bar it would be nice to be able to customize easily the skin. (like in Flex, WPF, etc.)
Regards,
Pascal
An excellent place to start is understanding how the Screen class works: MSDN Even though that is .Net, it will give you an idea of how the screen size, dpi, etc. can be obtained. In addition that information should translate to the Mono platform. Since your client is insisting on Linux, you should look at MonoDevelop and then possibly the GTK# framework. My understanding is that GTK# is not a very friendly (that is pretty) development system (yet).
See:
MonoDevelop
GTK#

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