Develop Reference

How to add a custom display mode to calendar

Is there a way to add a new custom Display Mode to the WPF Calendar control nad how can it be done?
First, I want to describe my problem more in detail.
In my application I need a date (and time) picker in one control to select first a single date and then the time for this date.
The control (as it is) has three display modes which are Decade (showing 12 Years), Month (showing the 12 months of the selected year) and Days (showing the days of the selected month).
What I want to do is, adding another display mode "Hours" which then will show the 24 hours of the selected day.
So there are many problems.
How to add this view?
How to avoid closing the popup after selecting a date? -> it should switch to hours instead and close after selecting the hour
How to add the arrows in the last view to show 12 hours and the halfs on page one of the hours view
How to bind all this to the underlying datetime object which I am interested in at most because it contains what the user selected ;-)
Hope the problem is clear. If there is no direct way to add a view to existing Calendar control than any idea how to solve this would be appreciated.

You could try the Extended WPF toolkit, if you are looking for a out-of-the-box solution. It does not do exactly what you are describing, but it does allow you to select a time in addition to a date.
But if it's not enough, I am pretty sure you will have to make a completely new component. In most cases, a restyling of a component is sufficient to add new features, but in this case, you would most likely have to rewrite it from scratch.
As a workaround, we made a separate hour selection component, which were displayed on the side of the calendar. It's simpler than to rewrite the whole thing anew.

List objects in a panel

i got a question regarding C#
I'm about making a program to hold all my daily tasks, and i need to show them in some kind of panel/list, Ive tryed with the gridview and it worked fine, but i don't want a "table" look, i rather want somekind of access database look, so it creates a new textbox/label maybe a panel with several informations - got any suggestions for this one? if it's possible in a easy way.

If you want just use WindowsForms, you can, for example, define a UserTaskControl:UserControl that holds unique set of controls you need for single entry.
Let's say you need for single entry to have Title, StartDate, EndDate, Description, so you can create a control with 4 TextBoxes or 2 TextBoxes and 2 Calendar controls (matter of design choice).
After define on main window TableLayoutPanel and at runtime add new instances of your UserTaskControl in the moment you need a new entry in your task list.
If you want to make things much better, consider of using WPF, as there you can use also UI Virtualization technique (just one example), which can make a difference in regard of WindowsForms, if you have too much entries in your list (too much is application specific measure, obviously). But in this case you need to learn WPF and learn to use it in a good way, which is a right thing to do IMHO, but depends on how much time you have.
Hope this helps.

A listview with checkboxes to check off when you've completed them? You can make the items editable or put in an "editing panel" to use to edit the values.
So you'd have:
[x] Get dressed
[x] Take out the garbage
[x] Make breakfast
[x] Ask ? on stackoverflow !
[ ] Implement solution
I did this one for work as a task tracker.

Implementing a multi-state planner

I've been asked to develop a system wherein employees can mark on a form their availability on a given day of the week - for instance an employee could mark themselves as available on a given time on a given week, and unavailable on some other time. It looks a little like this:
http://img697.imageshack.us/img697/842/mvcb.jpg
Currently this works by rendering checkboxes within the table, picking up click events in each cell and marking the checkbox and hence the cell appropriately. I'm using the JQuery "click n drag checkbox" plugin from here. However, I've been informed that there could well be more than two states for a given cell (for instance available, unavailable, available in a given circumstance), in which case binding to a checkboxes checked value isnt going to be a lot of help.
I've never used javascript or asp.net before and am unsure as to the best way to approach this problem. Ideally I could stick a data structure behind each cell which I could update to a certain state and then get my cell colour by binding to this - however I'm at something as a loss as how to best achieve this.

Add a click event to the cell - e.g. click on the cell. Each click could then change the status of the cell. This status could then be store via ajax or using a submit button like on a form. Each cell could relate to a hidden form field which is where you status could be kept.

Maybe take some inspiration from google calendar. There you can select a timespan in the month view by click-dragging a range of days. I guess thats a faster way of entering longer timespans. (Like the lower part of the dragon)

C# and Month Calendar, selecting multiple dates

I am making a program that will help people "book" orders for a department in C#. They need to be able to choose multiple dates in different months.
I would prefer to have it so they can click a date, and then shift click another one to select all dates between those two, and control clicking as well, to do single selection/deselection. They have to be able to move between months while still retaining all the dates they clicked for the previous month, this way they can overview the dates they've selected to make it easier.
What is the best way to do this? Should I use Visual Studio's default month calendar or is there a more flexible one that exists?

You can make it work by detecting clicks on dates and then add or remove the clicked date from the bolded dates. Implement the MonthCalendar's MouseDown event:
private void monthCalendar1_MouseDown(object sender, MouseEventArgs e) {
MonthCalendar.HitTestInfo info = monthCalendar1.HitTest(e.Location);
if (info.HitArea == MonthCalendar.HitArea.Date) {
if (monthCalendar1.BoldedDates.Contains(info.Time))
monthCalendar1.RemoveBoldedDate(info.Time);
else
monthCalendar1.AddBoldedDate(info.Time);
monthCalendar1.UpdateBoldedDates();
}
}
Just one problem with this, it flickers like a cheap motel. No fix for that.

The WinForms MonthCalendar supports selection of a Range, from Start to End but not the (de)selection of individual dates with Ctrl. So it seems it does not meet your requirements.
Just a quick note: If you resize the MonthCalendar it will show more months. Together with nobugz' answer that might give you a working solution.

Assuming that you are using WPF...
I would recommend that you create a simple ListBox and bind the ItemsSource property to the Calendar's SelectedDates property. As the user selects and deselects days from the Calendar, they will be added to or removed from the list.
In addition, you could create a DateSpan class and a ValueConverter to group dates in a series into your DateSpan class. You could then apply the converter to the SelectedDates property so that when the user uses Shift-Select, they will see a date span rather than a bunch of dates (assuming that's a bad thing). The logic wouldn't be too complex.
There are plenty of third-party tools out there, but no matter which control you use the core problem will remain: you want the user to be aware of all selected items, but you don't want to show every single month that contains a selected day at the same time. The best answer I can think of would be a list.

DateTimePicker-like Input Control

I'm not very experienced with .NET development, so forgive me if I've missed something obvious.
My scenario is quite simple: my program is going to deal with both the Imperial and Metric systems of measurement. I need an input control that will be able to elegantly house {feet, inches} and {meters, centimeters} (only one set at a time).
From what I've seen in VC#'s Control Toolbox (Winforms .NETF 3.5), I'm looking for a mix of MaskedTextBox, NumericUpDown, and DateTimePicker.
Namely:
MaskedTextBox's ability of filtering user input
NumericUpDown's ability of [in/de]crementing the user-selected [sub-]unit of measurement
DateTimePicker's ability of "breaking apart" information in a single control. I'm specifically interested in breaking apart say feet and inches while still displaying them on the same control
I should also point out that I'm most interested in replicating DateTimePicker's ability to keep separate pieces of input in a single control.
I would greatly appreciate your thoughts as to what base control I should sub-class in order to achieve this functionality.
Cheers!

Have you looked at this code project article which might be a starting point.

I think DateTimePicker isnt enough flexible to make that.
You should create a composite user control. The main control should contain:
Three NumericUpDown control (year, month, day)
Delegate events to every Validate event (instead of masked textbox)
Show a Calendar control when ie. user click into the NumbericUpDown control (or you can dedicate an '...' labelled button on the right)
Or yoou can search on CodeProject or Codeplex for opensource, and Telerik and DevX for shareware components.