Imagine you homebrew a custom gui framework that doesn't use windows handles (compact framework, so please don't argue with "whys"). One of the main disadvantages of developing such a framework is that you lose compatability with the winform designer.
So my question is to all of you who know a lot about VS customisation, would there be a clever mechanism by which one could incorperate the gui framework into the designer and get it to spit out your custom code instead of the standard windows stuff in the InitialiseComponent() method?
I recently watched a video of these guys who built a WoW AddOn designer for Visual Studio.
They overcame the task of getting their completely custom controls to render correctly in the designer. I'm not sure if this is exactly what you need, but might be worth looking at. It's open-source:
http://www.codeplex.com/WarcraftAddOnStudio
I've also since discovered that DXCore from DevExpress is a tool that simplifies plugin development. The default implementation wouldn't let me dock as document (central) but regardless one can still easily generate a plugin with it that can compile a file on the fly and render the contents of it which may well do the job for me. :)
Related
I've looking for GUI editor for ionic,, like android studio.
so I can create, editing code, etc in one application.
there is some idea how to do that?? i've looking in internet but not finding yet
also please comment if you down vote my post about why you do that
The closest thing that exists is Ionic Creator, which you can find here. It allows you to build interfaces by dragging-and-dropping and also has a built in code editor. It does not run locally and is currently free, but may cost money in the future.
Because this editor runs in the browser, you may be limited in libraries or dependencies you can use, but I am not sure. If you are building a complicated application, I would recommend using the regular Ionic tools to develop.
I'm thinking of game in game user interface.
Check out XNAML:
http://msmvps.com/blogs/valentin/pages/xnaml-component.aspx
http://xnaml.codeplex.com/
[The] engine is designed to run in a
pure Xna environement on all supported
device. My engine is extensible, you
can add your own controls, inherit
from base classes (such as Control or
Pane) to make your own behavior. The
compatibility with Xaml is complete.
Create your interface on Blend and
make a simple copy/past action to add
the Xaml file in your Xna project !
Extract a C# code from a Silverlight
project and just add it to your own
Xna project !
I would definitely check out the suggestions the The ZMan has put up on this post. There are lots of UI libraries in his post.
I think you should look at this list:
I remember Crazy Eddie as a good GUI builder.
Probably a bare-bones approach (but anything XNA will be) would be the ScreenManager class as used by the Microsoft code samples. A guide to using it can be found in the Game State Management documentation.
Another possibility is XPF, an XNA-compatible library that seeks to replicate some of WPF's UI architecture. I use it myself - it's simple and elegant. It will be free for non-commercial use, with commercial pricing TBA.
(I haven't been able to load the XNAML website, but I'd guess XPF and XNAML have similar goals.)
I am working on in installer project that needs to gather some info and act on it during the install (mainly online key retreival and registration). The Setup Project UserInterface templates seem inflexible and poorly documented so I am looking at opening a WinForm as a Custom Action.
I know this is possible because I see reference to it in many places but this is my first Windows Installer experience and so far it is mired in googled contradictions, partial or outdated information and guesswork... erg....
Does anyone have (even a pointer to) a clear concise description of how one gets this done in a VS 2008 WinForm project...
Many thanks for inputs
There is no guarantee that the .net framework is installed when the installer is launched (especially on Windows XP). A best practice is to keep your installer away from any dependencies.
Put the online key retrieval and registration in your application rather than doing all that stuff during install.
Create a standard installer class. In the class create your form and show it (ShowDialog is prefered)
Can anyone recommend a GUI builder tool for creating DHTML web apps using AJAX to communicate with a web service backend? I'd like to avoid having to mess around with designing HTML, marshalling/unmarshalling data, checking for browser compatibility, etc. The tool should have a library of widgets that can be put into an application and hooked up to functionality, and be extensible enough to be able to define custom widgets. Of course free and/or open source is preferrable but I would consider proprietary tools too.
Also to what extent does the choice of GUI tool affect what platform or language I would use for the backend? If the GUI is just calling a web service then I should be able to use anything on the server-side to provide that interface but maybe some gui-side tools use a proprietary data exchange format that requires some specific server-side code?
Edit: I don't need a widget that can be dragged, I want an IDE that allows one to build a gui easily (i.e. a RAD tool).
WaveMaker is open source, runs on J2EE.
If you're comfortable with Java, maybe you could try Google Web Toolkit? http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/
I'm using Wavemaker and it does exactly what are u asking...
It is really easy to use and very perfomant....
I believe Dreamweaver does some of this, but in my opinion such editors are not a good idea. They produce horrible, unmaintainable server-side code and are quite inflexible.
Wavemaker beats everything else I have used hands down. Applications can be developed rapidly, has drag and drop, can connect to any web service, and has unmatched database management tools. The only problem with it is that it has kept changing hands/ownership so much and its future direction is not clear.
Delphi for PHP from Codegear has some of this capability, but I would agree with ceejayoz that such tools don't necessarily make for nice code.
On Dan's suggestion I took a look at GWT. I'd heard of it before but never looked at it that closely and it seems pretty interesting. Certainly it takes away the annoyance of pixel pushing and making things work in multiple browsers. I also tried searching for "gwt rad tools" and came up with a couple of results:
Instantiations GWT Designer (commercial, $59/year)
Wirelexsoft Vistafei (still in beta but will have a free and a commercial version)
I'll take a look at these but if anyone's used something else let me know.
I'm looking for a way to create websites with the cool stylings of Windows Vista, like what is shown in this screenshot (taken from one of Microsoft's websites):
Any suggestions? I'd prefer an integrated designer / IDE, but libraries or templates might also help.
FYI, the answers before this were in response to a very poorly worded question. The OP did not make it clear that they were after a web page. Thanks to Shog9 for picking up the slack there.
This is NOTHING to do with WPF or VS 2008. Its a WEB application!
Lots of control vendors have produced some great looking controls, check out the ASP.NET controls gallery there is some cool stuff there. Another well-known vendor is Telerik who have created some real nice ASP.NET AJAX controls.
Note, this is not to promote their tools, I personally have not used them, they are popular, and it's just to give you the heads up.
In short, the look is pretty much fancy imagery. Unless Silverlight is used, which uses a subset of WPF and requires the plugin to be installed on the users browser, and requires VS2008 to create.
In terms of the screen shot, most of that is nice imagery, the buttons are probably rendered like that because you are running Vista, however, they could also be replicated without Vista. The page you show is not a Silverlight page, so it is not a requirement.
Have a Google for "ASP.NET vista style controls" there's tons of people after the same stuff :)
It's not a matter of what software to use - use whatever you normally use to design websites. If you want to make a web page that looks like one you see online, you can very easily obtain:
The HTML markup on the page
The CSS style sheets used by the page
The images used on the page
The Javascript used on the page (although this is less likely to be useful, as in most cases it will have been compacted and obfuscated).
Also Delphi 2009 ;-).
As mentioned Visual Studio 2008 has WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) based development tools in it. Have a look in your Project templates for WPF Application along with WPF Browser Application and WPF User Control Library. All of these pertain to Vista WPF.
The "cool Vista stylings" are done using WPF, for which you'll need Visual Studio 2008. 90-day trial downloads are here. The "Express Products" (free, stripped-down versions) are here.