I am planning to develop a UI control suite (open source) on .net because there is hardly such things as free or open source out in the market. But I am not really able to decide the following factors before going into design phase:
Should I write it for Winforms only?
Should I write it for WPF only?
Or, should I write it for both?
Which one would be more effort effective in the long run and help the community better? Can you guys please help me to sort this things out?
'Writing it for both' is basically 'write it twice', as I can't imagine much would be shared.
I think if I was suddenly filled with the idea that the world needed yet more 3rd party controls, I would write them for WPF/Silverlight/WP7.
WPF, but it's just my opinion.
Windows OSs that are supported (XP, Vista, 7) all support it, and WPF is the future. I don't see Winforms' death in the proximity, but we should support things that are right now actively supported.
It's like developing for IE6 instead of Firefox/Safari/Chrome/Opera. Most of us don't see IE6 dying, but we have to move forward.
Related
Having searched high and low for native c# hook to webcam, I found 5 basic ways to interact with the camera.
Video for Windows (VFW)
DirectX
avicap32.dll
WIA
3rd party tools
My requirement is to take a photo. The application will be used on some legacy windows XP and Vista machines, but going forward Windows 7 and greater will be required. So what might the best approach be with the broad install base? Just reading WIA looked like the way to go but looks like some changes were made so it works a little different now (I don't know for sure). I understand that some people have done combos.
Might need to crop photo, but that is really about it.
For school visitor monitoring.
I think the best thing is to use the WIA. I know a third party toolkit that could help you doing your requirements which is leadtools. You can check this Tutorial
I would always try to pick up something already on the web and tweak it to my own needs... some open source project or an example where the mainly portion of my app is already made.
on Codeplex you can find a nice library to work with webcams and it's simply called
WebCam Library for WinForm and WPF with C# and VB.NET
Give that a try, maybe you can even help the project, by contributing your own findings, and everyone is a winner... isn't Open Source a great idea?!
Is it possible to create console apps like the Edit app in CMD with visual basic or C#? I want the program to respond to mouse input, have menubar, mssgboxes and windows.
Yes, this is possible! Instead of doing it completely from scratch, check out Curses Sharp. It is a wrapper for the curses library, which helps in building applications like this.
I must admit though, I have never used it. Please let us know how it goes.
Console API provided with .NET is not suitable for that sort of development. You'll need to do lots of P/Invoke to the platform console API. I would really suggest WinForms/WPF if you need GUI.
If you really want to do it anyway, you'll need to implement low level mouse/keyboard hooks. This will get you started: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/toub/archive/2006/05/03/589468.aspx
If you want it to run on DOS, you can't (because C#/vb.net don't run on DOS). If you want it to run on Windows, I think you're better off using Windows Forms or WPF.
To answer your question; it is probably possible but it would take an enormous amount of work and for the above reasons I don't think it would have any payoff.
I'm rebuilding an Embedded application:
Prebuild application Specifications:
Use : For dispaying the captured images/video from microscope image capturing device on windows based PC or Laptops.
Sepcifications: Prebuild on .NET plateform using VC++
Flaws : Lacks some specified features.
Current Requirement:
Want to rebuild that entire application using C# and add some additional client features.
My Questions:
Is it feasible to develop such application in C#.net?
If yeh,What kind of resources available in C# to develop desktop embedded application?
Any references which show any of such kind of application?
Your suggestions on building this kind of application.
P.S. It is essential to buid it on .NET platform.
I think by "Prebuild" you mean "Existing". Why do you want to rewrite the complete application? As you have stated that the application is written in C++.Net. You can easily add all the new functions in C# and use that code from your existing C++.Net code.
Note: I'm making this answer CW because the question is hard on the limit towards some close reasons. Everyone feel free to edit and extend it.
Is it feasible to develop such application in C#.net?
That's a tough one...from the top of my head I'd argue that it doesn't matter. If you know C#, then build it in C#, if the client wants it in C#, then build it in C#. You'll most likely have to use COM-Components or API-Invokes anyway to accomplish this.
If it is a TWAIN device, you might be better of to stick with VC++, I found TWAIN on .NET a real pain in the a** and have given up on such features. Same goes for WIA, but that might just be me.
If yes, what kind of resources available in C# to develop desktop embedded application?
I guess you mean a Widget? In that case I have no idea, I never really looked at that (at least not on Windows). But as far as I know widgets on Windows consist of a data-backend and a HTML/JavaScript-Frontend, so you'll most likely have to develop the two separately.
Any references which show any of such kind of application?
I guess any WIA/TWAIN application would be a reference, at least your description sounds so.
Your suggestions on building this kind of application.
See your first question.
I am about to write a front end app, which will be used as a media center app. It will plug directly into a high definition TV. Essentially transforming my laptop into a media player. While this concept is not new, I want custom functionality, so this is why I am not reusing existing products.
I'm a C# developer, so the app should ideally be written in C#. And there is 1 other consideration, I need to accept input via the MCE Remote.
I was considering using Silverlight for this. Would you recommend this? Or any other recommendations for frameworks before I begin planning around this.
Thanks in advance.
This is the type of stuff that the Windows Presentation Foundation was meant for. You'll get a lot more access to the hardware than Silverlight would provide (I.E. that MCE remote you mentioned). You mark up your UI with vector graphics/XAML, and then perform the logic with C#.
EDIT: WPF also has support out of the box for animations which can make your UI a lot more interactive.
EDIT 2: Scott Hanselman has written a really cool application called BabySmash and posted the source online. It basically intercepts keyboard input and shows shapes and sounds on the computer. It's a good "child-proofing" method for your PC. The code could provide you with some insight into WPF and how to do the animations and interactivity that you're looking for.
Is this a desktop app? If so I would use WPF. Silverlight is a subset of WPF, so using WPF you could potentially do more.
Silverlight or WPF, if you want some extra power. Both have a similar programming model (with XAML and code-behind) so you might be able to start with Silverlight and move up to WPF if you need.
The VLC api might be useful for playing your media, someone has created a C# wrapper for it:
http://wiki.videolan.org/.Net_Interface_to_VLC
WPF is certainly the way to go, and for playing media check out the excellent WPF MediaKit: http://wpfmediakit.codeplex.com/ I've used it successfully in many projects.
i m developing a little tool on my Pocket PC using WM6 SDK but i would like to implement a finger friendly user interface (iphone-like).
So i m looking for a free .NET framework that offers the possibility to easily integrate a finger friendly interface for Windows Mobile 6 Pro .
Any ideas ?
EDIT : Finger friendly means big icons, big buttons , scrollable screens with a simple touch of the thumb... Because the Winforms in Compact framework are made for the stylus, not fingers !!
I know of no such interface API.
I would code such an interface from scratch, overriding Paint and mouse events. If you need more fancy drawing tools that compact framework provides, you should look for pinvoke to access GDI+.
You should really check out Resco's MobileForms Toolkit 2009.
I bet their controls are exactly what you are looking for. Plus they have a whitepaper and videos to show off the controls.
I am not sure it is what you are looking for (I didn't have time to examine it yet myself, but I definately intend to); this UI Framework looks interesting:
http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/uiframework
Check out the Fluid windows mobile controls available at http://fluid.codeplex.com/
This might be what you are looking for, and its open source.
Any current readers on this thread should check out SlideUI (http://www.devslide.com/products/slideui). It's a current (and supported) product which offers touch friendly (iphone-like) scrolling and controls.
I'm not entirely sure what you're asking here... Windows Mobile 6.0 Pro is touch-screen enabled, so you should simply have to create your project targeting the Windows Mobile 6.0 Pro (note, however, that your application will not be compatible with Windows Mobile 6.0 Standard devices).
I know exactly what you are talking about. All the .NET Controls are designed for the stylus. When you make them bigger for the finger, there is no guarantee they will respond well. Add to that every hardware devices sensitivity is different and its even harder.
I recently built an application attempting to incorporate some touch like functionality. it was a pain having hand code all this stuff.
The problem with a 3rd party library, as opposed as coming in Windows MObile is then everyone is designing their own library and navigation techiques. Hopefully MS will wise up on this front.
http://sites.google.com/site/nebowiki/
If you are developing finger friendly apps, your target device needs a process to handle finger input as opposed to the stylus. HTC devices (Such as the Kaiser, Mogul, Touch Pro, etc.) use TouchFlo for this purpose. There are a few different versions of TouchFlo and I'm not sure if there is an SDK, but you need to incorporate it into whatever you program. xda-developers.com will have lots of info about it.
It IS amazing that with WM6.1 Pro, .NET CF 3.5 and VS2008 that all we have available are the basic stylus-sized controls that are are spartan in the extreme. i.e., coyote-ugly. I'm about ready to chew my hand off rather than use them in an app.
So where is the third-party collection of controls that all WM developers are flocking to, to provide touch-friendly apps?
Ugly is truly the correct word for most (mine included) mobile win apps.
I am developing for an older piece of hardware with a mono screen which makes it even worse.
Take a look here:
http://www.windowsfordevices.com/news/NS9328208835.html
and here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd630622.aspx
This is not free, but it is affordable - some of the screen shots are pretty nice looking:
http://www.basic4ppc.com/?gclid=CIiO1di1nJoCFRAhDQodYX8-9A
Anyway...sorry if this was just googledragging - maybe it had something you had missed.
--Joe
Finger Freindlyness is a result of the touch screen technology (capacitive screens are less accurate, but require zero pressure; resistive screens require physical pressure and are harder to swipe, flick, etc.)
With Windows Mobile 6.5, they have introduced a system gestures library (and if you'd rather not have to P/Invoke it, there is a sample wrapper on MSDN Code Gallery). Theoretically, it would be possible to write to this new library, and maybe emulate the gestures on pre-WM6.5 devices, if required.