I am developing an application with WPF. I added the Microsoft Ribbon control to my XMAL UI page, but its style is similar more to the Office 2010 design than the Office 2013 one. I'd like something that adheres more to the Windows Store App design principles. Is there a way to change it?
It's a WPF control, so yes.
You have two options, either you play around with the control's style, to make it look slightly different, changes brushes, etc ...
Or you modify its control template, to completely reorganise it.
Related
I want to design a modern looking UI using visual studio designer in xaml. It gives me a nice toolbox which I can use to create a UI visually by drag and drop. As it is almost behaving like HTML, I was wondering if it too has a rich library of themes. I found some, but they are not editable through designer.
Can someone please help me out and direct me to appropriate links where I can find editable themes for xaml for my WPF project?
I use this:
Mahapps.metro http://mahapps.com/
I very good looking thems and it is free. More info https://stackoverflow.com/a/15500408/5816153
Others:
Modern UI for WPF (MUI) - https://github.com/firstfloorsoftware/mui
And for more info on SO: Making WPF applications look Metro-styled, even in Windows 7? (Window Chrome / Theming / Theme)
I'm trying to add those big buttons to my project.
How are they called? Are they even part of .NET Framework?
I haven't been able to find much, but I was able to find a guide on how to make a Windows Aero Style Wizard Control which suggests that this style isn't easily accessible in .NET. I think you should check it out and see if there is anything you'd want to use.
As (as far as I know) there are no resources built into the .NET Framework for creating Windows Aero style forms easily, the aim of this project was to provide access to a (or some) classes that the user can use to create themed forms easily.
I'd like to get ahead of the pack and start making some custom C# controls and components for Metro (Win8), but I can't find any documentation or blog posts on how to start, or even if it's possible right now.
Are metro controls just WPF controls? I'm not yet a WPF developer; creating a custom user control looks straightforward, but that project type doesn't exist in the Windows 8 developer preview. So, are WPF custom user controls (VS2010) the project type I should use for creating my Metro controls? Beyond that, I can't find any documentation on how to create a component for use in WPF/Metro; can you create one, or would it just be a custom user control that isn't visible? (I was hoping for some type of component container like the one winforms use; are components for Metro now only class libraries, and don't include designer support anymore?)
It's ... very difficult right now. There's no way to override OnRender or the like for a control, ie to create code to render a control with a custom appearance. However, you can create a custom template. Anything you can do in the template is legal, and that's how you have to approach custom controls.
One other option is to generate your UI using either raster (Bitmap) or vector (Windows.UI.Xaml.Shape?) components directly and build up your UI like that. Bleh.
Win8 Metro is a lot like WPF, but it isn't a subset. Similar but very different. Many WPF controls didn't make the transition to Win8 Metro; the same level of rendering control isn't available; and some system features (like advanced font rendering) aren't there. All this might change in coming releases, but right now it looks like Microsoft is trying to restrain developers from creating custom UI controls.
I created a TabControl using Windows Forms but the tab headers look very ugly. I want to make them with rounded corners and also create some space between two tab headers. Can anyone please tell how it can be done using C#.
Thanks,
gary
You'll want to do one of a few things:
Make your own custom control that inherits from TabControl and overrides its render method.
Download a third-party custom tab control that does what you want.
Switch to WPF, which gives you some more flexibility in the way of creating and styling controls.
There isn't a way to do this with System.Windows.Forms.TabControl out of the box, so you'll have to either live with what you've got, or roll your own.
Not to spark any heated debate, but WinForms is an aging API. If you're building a brand new application and/or learning a UI framework for the first time, you might consider using WPF instead. For legacy code, it's fine to maintain WinForms of course.
The System.Windows.Forms.TabControl class is just a wrapper around the Windows COMCTL32 tab control. Unfortunately, that control doesn't provide much in the way of customization options. You'll have to switch controls, either to WPF, custom code, or some third-party product.
Using .NET 2.0 with WinForms, I'd like to create a custom, multi-columned menu (similiar to the word 2007 look&feel, but without the ribbon).
My approach was creating a control, and using a left/right docked toolstrip, I have constructed a similar look&feel of a menu. However, there are a few shortcomings of this solution, such as
the control can only be placed, and displayed within the form;
if the form is too small, some area of the control won't be displayed;
the control also have to be manually shown/hidden.
Thus, I'm looking for a way to display this control outside of the boundaries of the application. Creating a new form would result in title-bar deactivating on display, so that's also out. Alternatively, any other approach to create a customized menu would be very welcomed.
Edit: I don't want to use any commercial products for this; and since it's about a simple menu customization, it's not related to Microsoft's ribbon "research" in any way.
unless you are in the business of providing .net components, you should be looking to buy it off the shelf. Its a lot of work getting such a control right - There are already vendors providing this kind of UI. e.g. ComponentOne
if you are trying to build this component as a product, you should look at the link below. Apparently Microsoft has a 'royalty-free' license around the Office UI to protect their R&D investments. As of now you need to tell them that you are using something similar to the Office UI. More of that here
The MenuStrip class has a Renderer property. You can assign your own ToolStripRenderer derived class to customize the painting. It's a fair amount of work.