Develop Reference

Xamarin C# XAML Cross-Platform With Buttons Bound To Custom Graphic

Here's the basic idea of what I'm trying to do; have this (see image link) graphic with roots going into the ground and the roots split off into different directions. At the end of each root I'd like to place a round button with a number in it which will take them to a new page. (the image only shows a few buttons but later on, for updates i'll have more lessons, meaning more buttons, and so the page would scroll down revealing more buttons)
What I have tried; I tried drawing a dynamic root system graphic, which worked and resized properly based on the screen size. But Skiasharp doesn't really work with absolute layouts and adding buttons on top of the SKCanvas. From my understanding absolute layouts are the only way to but buttons in customs spots.
I'd like to have the Graphic dynamic and locked onto the buttons. I'v tried just placing the buttons over the top of a background image that already had the root graphic on it. But, they don't always align properly.
Is there a way to make this work, or another way to draw the graphic and have the buttons bound to the end of the roots? Or am I just stuck with not having them align with a static background image?
Concept image for app page is below:

Is it possible to rotate a picture box without C# code on the Form Designer or change shape of picture box border?

I am very new to C# and WinForms. I am trying to create a segmented display where certain segments turn on and off (Using Microsoft Visual Studio 2015).
Right now I am placing picture boxes with segments I cropped and removed the background on in GIMP and it works fine so long as the segments are far enough away from each other, or are perfectly square.
When they overlap, with setting the picture box background transparent, the picture box is transparent straight through another picture box and just shows the background of the form window where the rectangular picture box is covering.
I tried two different things:
Changing default rectangular shape of picture box to any shape I can draw; not really sure how to do it and i don't think it is possible
Adding a bunch of picture boxes with a dark black picture and then rotating them and moving them to the correct position and turning them on when the particular segment comes on to cover up the problem. However, I don't think I can, or know how to just rotate an entire picture box when I am placing it? I have seen some code online on rotating picture boxes in C# but I am not sure how to implement it. I feel like with anything else there has to be a rotate option I am just missing.
Attached is a picture of the problem, notice how I sent the segment (line) to the back and the SMS quote image to the front. The dotted lines are the picture boxes:

You can use a WPF project to accomplish what you want. It is much more flexible than WinForms. Plus it supports true transparency. It does have a bit of a learning curve, but if you're just starting out, I think you would be better served to start with WPF.
You can rotate an Image (PictureBox) in WPF as follows:
<Window x:Class="WpfApplication.Window1"
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
Title="Window1" Height="467" Width="616">
<Grid>
<Image Source="C:\MyFolder\MyImage.gif">
<Image.LayoutTransform>
<RotateTransform Angle="45" />
</Image.LayoutTransform>
</Image>
</Grid>
</Window>

The winforms designer does not have features for real UX design. It's mainly targeted for designing simple UI for data oriented application. You will not find any advanced features. You can resize the controls, align them, moving between containers.
There are advanced ways, how to change the shape of controls. But it is not available in winforms designer.
The transparency in winforms is fake. Actualy the transparency means "I'll show the background color of my parent". If you want "true transparency" you must draw the other controls as the background image of target control.

Equivalent of canvas in Windows forms

I am creating a simple app to display multiple images one below the other.
In WPF, I used Number of canvas equivalent to number of images and added those canvas to the main canvas.
And using Image control in each canvas, i uploaded the images with me and it is looking good.
Now, I Am trying to do the same in Windows forms.
I tried Panel (as the main canvas in WPF) and draw images over it by using Panel_Paint event. it is fine. But I need to add something(as I added multiple canvas in WPF), but did not get strike any thing.
I planned for few panels, but all them need Panel_Paint to draw images over it.That is some what difficult to maintain... any other ideas?

You can create your own custom control and override OnPaint method. There you will be able to draw whatever you like in Canvas like mode. Create element specify its coordinates, draw it with Graphics object. And for overlaying use linear drawing order, items drawn later will be top most.

If you want to create a Paint-like canvas, where you can draw simple graphics and images, you could use an instance of Graphics, like the following:
// myPictureBox is the control where your graphics will be drawn
Graphics myCanvas = myPictureBox.CreateGraphics();
If you want to display a group of images, like .jpg are displayed in the files explorer, you could use a ListView.

C# Gray out a control and draw another on it

I´m using WinForms. I want to make a little class, which modifys controls to show it´s working.
I want to draw an overlay over for example a button. It should be a half-transparent gray.
After that i want to draw a ProgressBar on over it (in the center). Similar to This, except using a progress bar.
How can i realize this? I don´t want to set the position of the progressbar, just drawing it on the other one.
How could i do this?
Thanks :)

I have done something similar before.
You need to use Button.DrawToBitmap(Bitmap, Rectangle) to get the image of the button. Then make the Bitmap grayscale (there are multiple algorithms available for this; I have used the last one successfully although probably not originally from this site).
Now, I did this with an entire form instead of a button, but I disabled the form, and then covered the entire form with an image of itself, altered and then covered it with the progress bar (itself in a panel with other controls).
You could just as easily disable the button, cover it with a panel containing the image and the progress bar on top of it.

WinForms (.NET) Button Anchoring when Maximized

Ok, I have googled, but maybe I put my search in weirdly. :/
I have a VB.NET WinForms application. I have the anchor properties set for all the controls so that it will resize all the controls to look decent when the form is maximized. (Haven't gotten around to manual resizing yet however).
Anyway, the problem:
I go to set the same properties for a button (testing with a single button for now) on the main GUI form/picture. When I go to run the program via F5, it looks decent. But when I maximize the form, the entire button covers up more than it should.
I've taken screenshots of the form so you can see a visual of what I'm talking about. :/
Before: http://zack.scudstorm.com/before.png
After: http://zack.scudstorm.com/after.png
What other propert(y|ies) do I need to set for the buttons to show up correctly? :/ (The buttons go over the boxes that say, for example, "1-1", "2-3", etc.
Thanks,
-Zack

Seems like you have anchored top-left and bottom-right when what you want is just top-left.
Edit: If it's just an image that does not change when the winform changes, then don't anchor your buttons at all. Just put them where they go. If you are scaling the image, then I would either detect the clicks on the image and do the scaling math or do the scaling math and set my buttons in code in the Form.OnResize event.

As it appears that your goal is just to be able to handle clicks on the "computers"...
One option that can be useful for this sort of task is to create an "overlay" bitmap (not displayed, but which is the exact same size as your source bitmap) which uses different colors to represent all the clickable regions. (e.g. (R=0,G=0,B=0) for computer 0, (0,0,1) for computer 1, etc)
You could even generate this bitmap somewhat automatically without too much trouble (If you have a mode where you can click the top left and then bottom right corners of the image to define a new region)
When the mouse is clicked, you can check the pixel at the scaled coordinates of the mouse position in the overlay and determine what their click corresponds to. This can be a lot easier than creating loads of controls, and makes it a lot easier to have clickable regions that aren't rectangular.