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.
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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.
I have been trying to customize a webbrowser control in wp7. All I need to do is to add a border property(I think it is already available in webbrowser but I have to make it mandatory when I make it as a control) and want to add a few extra event handlers and make it as a control so that it can be used later in different projects.
I tried reading through materials in msdn for writing control template and it all revolves around writing a few xaml code and attaching it with codebehind to make it work. What I don't understand is how do I learn xaml? or in other words where is the reference for all the tags that msdn talks about in xaml? Itseems to be huge and I am not sure how to go about it. The tutorial in msdn straight away divulges into xaml code and I am totally confused..
So now all I am trying to do is this,
create a control in Expression Blend (Windows Phone Control Library) that would create a class (MyCustomControl) that inherits
from CustomControl base class.
Now in xaml I am adding a webbrowser control and adding four event handlers (mouseup,down etc.,).
I build this control in blend and add the corresponding dll in VS2010.
And now once I try to add this control to my wp7 phone application it says "Cannot create an instance of MyCustomControl"..
These were further links that I referenced in creating one,
Windowsphone - Creating a custom control
Windowsphone - Control Template.
UserControl vs Custom Control
Creating a new control by creating ControlTemplate
Any further help would be great.
There is no definitive list of 'elements' you can add to your XAML. The reason for this is that the XAML parser can create any class which is a UIElement based on the XML you provide. So the elements available to you depend on the assemblies present in your project. Read teh MSDN XAML Overview for details
For a list of controls that are present by default, take a look at the System.Windows.Controls namespace (I think this link is not for your version of Silverlight, it might be best to use the Object Browser to look at the assemblies in your project).
For your problem, where you want to add a border to a WebBrowser control. I would recommend creating a UserControl as per this tutorial.
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.
WPF WebBrowser control looks great but knowledge accumlated over time about WinForms WebBrowser is substantial and it's hard to ignore work like csExWB. It would be nice to know what functional shortcomings or advantages exists in .NET 3.5's WPF WebBrowser control over WinForms WebBrowser control. In particular, is it possible to build csExWB-like functionality on top of WPF WebBrowser?
From one full day of frustration with wpf's component, here's what I discovered. Apparently, winforms webbrowser exposes much more methods and properties. For instance, there's no IsWebBrowserContextMenuEnabled, ActiveXInstance, etc. in wpf webbrowser.
Also, the document property of each contains different types of objects. Winform contains a document of type System.Windows.Forms.HtmlDocument with a few interesting methods and properties like PointToClient and GetElementFromPoint. Wpf webbrowser document is an Object type document that can be cast to mshtml.HtmlDocument, which only provides the same methods and properties available from a standard html + javascript document. Not very exciting. I don't know if it can be cast to something else (useful that is) since there's no real documentation about it.
The only disadvantage I could notice about winforms webbrowser is that the buttons and scrollbars inside the component don't have the same appearance as the wpf native controls.
I must admit I don't know the differences, but if you hit problems you could perhaps use WindowsFormsHost to host the winform version in WPF, like so? Ultimately, both is a wrapper around shdocvw, so principles like "pure WPF" don't really apply.