Home

User Interfaces in C#-Windows Forms and Custom

1. Retrieve current item Menultem mnultem Menultem sender Font menuFont new Font Tahoma 8 Measure size needed to display text We add 30 pixels to the width to allow a generous spacing for the image ItemHeight int e Graphics MeasureString mnultem Text menuFont Height 5 e ItemWidth int e Graphics MeasureString mnultem Text menuFont Width t 30 When displaying a drop down menu Windows automatically measures the size of each item and uses the greatest require The final step of displaying the menu item is similarly straightforward You must find the appropriate picture and write both tt the DrawString and Drawlmage methods The result is shown in Figure 4 16 El Owner Drawn Menu SE File Chapter 4 Classic Controls byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site ay CEE Drag and Drop Drag and drop operations aren t quite as common today as they were a few years ago because programmers have graduall technique that many users find difficult to master For example a drawing program is likely to use a two step operation sel drag and drop often use it as a shortcut for advanced users rather than a standard way of working Drag and drop is also sometimes confused with the ability to drag a picture or piece of user interface around a window Thi application developed in 13 but it needs to be coded manually In this section you will lea
2. System ComponentMode Design ComponentDesigner System Windows Forms Design ParentControlDesigner ScrollableControlDes gner DocumentDesigner Figure 8 11 Control designer classes ControlDesigner Controls can also derive their own custom designers Why would you create your own designer o To add special designer tools like context menu options o To remove inappropriate events or properties from view or add designtime only events or properties o To add support for controls that contain other controls like the toolbar or controls with special needs like menus The next few sections consider all these topics by designing and enhancing a DirectoryTreeDesigner class that works with t Filtering Properties and Events Sometimes an event or property needs to be hidden from a control but not removed entirely For example the ProgressBa Text property should be hidden from the Properties window If you are defining or overriding a property you can use the Browsable attribute to keep it from appearing in the Properties w automatically at runtime based on the Drive property The TreeView Nodes property is not overridable so you can t use the Designers provide six methods from the IDesignerFilter interface that you can override to filter properties events and attribu Table 8 3 ControlDesigner Filtering Methods Method PostFilterAttributes PostFilterEvents PostFilterProperties
3. Figure 3 1 Control hierarchy On its own the Control class has no real purpose It s mainly interesting for the basic functionality that it defines Sorting thre reset values to their defaults along with some more useful and unusual members The sections in this chapter sort through Table 3 1 Basic Control Members Member Name Chapter 3 Control Class Basics User intertaces in Ce byMatthew MacDonald Windows Forres sn Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Position and Size A control s position is defined by the distance between its top left corner and the top left corner of its container Often the c measured as the width and height of the control from the top left point By convention the position measurement is positive i Note In the later chapters on GDI you will discover that it is possible to create specialized controls that have irregular boundaries by using the Region property Chapter 5 previews this technique with irregularly shaped forms All values are integers measured in pixels They are provided through several properties including Top Left Right and Bott of these properties the preferred way for setting position is by using the Location property with a Point structure Similarly 1 originate from the System Drawing namespace Desktop Area Fomi v gt E 5 2 Foret Height Forma width Figure 3 3 Control measurements The following code shows how you can set the location
4. Including a comprehensive examination of the user interface controls and classes in NET this resource provides an overview of how to design elegant user interfaces the average user can understand Companion Web Site Table of Contents Back Cover Table of Contents User Interfaces in C Windows Forms and Custom Controls Preface _ Introduction Ch apt er E Ch apt er 2 Ch apt er 3 Ch apt er a ch apt er 3 ch apt er 5 Ch apt er E Ch apt er 8 ch apt er 9 Ch apt er 10 ch apt er ii Ch apt er 12 Ch apt er 42 Creating Usable Interfaces Designing with Classes and Tiers Control Class Basics Classic Controls Forms Modern Controls Custom Controls Design Time Support for Custom Controls Data Controls MDI Interfaces and Workspaces Dynamic User Interface GDI Basics GDI Controls Preface byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Preface In the past few months a deluge of NET books has hit store shelves each one eager to explain the new programming philc need to really master NET programming Part of the problem is that no single work can cover the entire NET platform a spr technology Many NET books provide a good overview of essential concepts but they can t deal with the subtleties needed i This book represents the start of the second wave of NET books closely focused works that give you
5. S Tab Order ER Dom E Eteo ii el HERE Figure 3 7 The Visual Studio NET tab order tool Label controls have a TabIndex setting even though they cannot receive focus This allows you to use a label with an acces control in the tab order For that reason you should give your labels an appropriate place in the tab order especially if they label s text Controls that are invisible or disabled commonly known as greyed out are generally skipped in the tab order and are not Visible and Enabled properties respectively Note that if you hide or disable a control at design time the appearance is not time and it is recommended that custom controls also follow this pattern Chapter 3 Control Class Basics byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 O Companion Web Site Responding to the Mouse and Keyboard Controls also provide some built in intelligence for dealing with the keyboard and mouse These include low level events tha information Table 3 4 Table 3 4 Events for Reacting to the Keyboard Event Description KeyDown Occurs when a key is pressed while the curren the state of the Alt and Ctrl keys and the key c KeyPress This is a higher level event that occurs once th The event provides a KeyPressEventArgs obje Handled property which you can set to true to an input control KeyUp This occurs when a key is released just after tl Generally you will react to the KeyDown and KeyUp events when you need
6. To create a toolbar that can float you need to add some additional logic to the mouse events that detect if the toolbar is clic of a movement in either direction Then other event handling logic comes into play which allows the control to be dragged ar Here s the code that needs to be added to the Form class to support this design It s similar to the dragging code developed process of moving the floating control private bool draggingToolbar private Point draggedFrom private void toolBarl_MouseDown object sender System Windows Forms MouseEventArgs e draggingToolbar true draggedFrom new Point e X e Y toolBarl Capture true private void toolBarl_MouseMove object sender System Windows Forms MouseEventArgs e if draggingToolbar if toolBarl Dock DockStyle Top Check if the dragging has reached the threshold if draggedFrom X lt e X 20 draggedFrom Y lt e Y 20 draggingToolbar false Disconnect the toolbar Chapter 10 MDI Interfaces and Workspaces byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site ED amy The Last Word This chapter explored MDI programming and design The chapter began with an introduction to NET s effortless MDI feature more detail with a sophisticated example of document view architecture which provides the freedom to create multiple synct into one of MDI design s hottest topics with an introduction to co
7. Chapter 6 Modern Controls byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site CID The ToolBar The ToolBar control represents a strip of buttons that gives access to various features in an application Conceptually toolb features in an application Toolbar buttons can include text and variable size pictures You can layer several toolbars on a form and attach drop down E ToolBar Example FAG One Two Three Gone Two Three Text on Right Flat Buttons Gone Two Toggle Buttons Drop Down Button Menu 1 x Menu 2 Menu 3 Figure 6 10 Toolbar styles Unfortunately NET does not currently provide any way to create a cool bar the snap in toolbar strip used in applications then you can start to create your own using the information in Chapter 8 or use ActiveX interop with the components provid Most of the ToolBar properties are appearance related see Table 6 9 Table 6 9 Appearance related ToolBar Properties Member Appearance AutoSize BorderStyle ButtonSize Divider DropDownArrows ImageList Chapter 6 Modern Controls byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Synchronizing the ToolBar Usually a toolbar duplicates functionality that is available in a window s menu This can result in some rather tiresome state button at the same time To simplify this process you can create a customized menu class that automatically forwards its This custom cont
8. Apress 2002 Companion Web Site CE ar Splitting Windows One of the most recognizable user interface styles in applications today is the split window look arguably popularized by Wi paradigm of MDI and Microsoft has led the change although many developers myself included still favor MDI design for m In NET split window designs are refreshingly easy to create which is a dramatic departure from most other programming e 1 Start by docking a control to one side of the window 2 Add the Splitter control and dock it to the same side 3 Add another control and set its docking to Fill so it occupies the rest of the window The example in Figure 5 19 shows this technique with a TreeView and a ListView By moving the position of the splitter bar M Split Window Figure 5 19 A basic splitter bar In this case the window is somewhat claustrophobic To improve the spacing you can set a buffer using the form s DockPa that you need to anchor the ListView and TreeView in separate docked Panels as you consider in the next example You can also set the SplitterBar MinSize property to configure the smallest size in pixels to which the first docked control controls on the other side of the splitter Docking with Panels Rather than docking specific controls as in the preceding example it s more common to dock two Panel controls one on e their spacing You can then use anchoring to cause the controls inside the P
9. Apress 2002 Companion Web Site CZD Advanced ListView Tricks To unlock all the functionality of the ListView control you need to delve deeper into the NET classes that support it Some Table 6 3 Advanced ListView Members Member Activation and HoverSelection Alignment AllowColumnReorder AutoArrange and Arrangelcons CheckBoxes CheckedIndices and Checkedltems FullRowSelect GridLines HeaderStyle LabelEdit LabelWrap Sorting BeginUpdate and EndUpdate EnsureVisible GetltemAt AfterLabelEdit and BeforeLabelEdit events Description Activation determines how items in when it hovers over an item The Hi over it This formerly cutting edge fe Sets the side of the ListView that it When set to true the user can drag code In Smalllcon and Largelcon view tr anywhere by the user When CheckBoxes is true every ite ListViewltem Checked property of e values CheckedIndices When set to true the entire row will setting for database applications th Displays attractive column and row information Allows you to configure whether col When set to true ListViewltem text Allows the text label to wrap in one Allows you to specify an ascending subitems Allows you to temporarily suspend Scrolls to make sure a specified Lis Retrieves the ListViewltem at the gi Events that fire before and after a la that allowe voi to cancel the edit Chapter 6 Modern Con
10. This chapter considers some of the most common types of controls like menus text boxes and buttons Many of these cor controls you will learn about the hyperlink label checked list box and rich date controls l Il also describe menus in detail a The final part of this chapter demonstrates two advanced NET features First you learn how you can add support for drag a Types of Controls Not all controls are created equal NET uses specialized controls that don t appear on forms enhance other controls and p Invisible Controls Invisible controls don t require a portion of form real estate These include controls that never have a visual appearance like When you drag an invisible control onto the form surface a special icon appears for it in the component tray see Figure 4 1 added to the form s Controls collection Formi cs Design ees Bl ContextMenut amp Timer El Openfileciaiog1 Figure 4 1 The component tray In some cases it s worth asking whether invisible controls are really controls at all For example the Timer is just a special marshal calls when interacting with a control In other words there is no need to use the Control Invoke method because Note Invisible controls don t derive from the Control class Instead they derive from System ComponentModel Component the Control class also derives from this class The Component class adds the basic features needed for an item to be hosted in a containe
11. This menu event handler is written using the SourceControl property which means it s generic enough to be used with any Help keyword Help Without the HelpProvider Now that you are this far it s possible to unshackle yourself completely from the HelpProvider class It works like this handle launch the appropriate help programmatically with the Help class There are two tricks to making this work The first one is setting the form s KeyPreview property to true which makes sure il make sure vou create an event handler for the KeyDown event not the KeyPress event which doesn t react to the special F Chapter 14 Help and Application Embedded Support gt byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site UD a Application Embedded Support One of the crucial shortcomings with the Help systems you have looked at is that they are all designed to provide fine graine miserably when it tries to walk the user through a long involved task However better help is possible What s needed is a c Application embedded support represents that change Quite simply embedded help is user assistance that is a first class complete Embedded help provides far greater user assistance but also requires far more development work Some examples of embedded help include 0 Process oriented Some applications reserve a portion of their interface for continuous tip messages or use a tiny trains users as they work and is used to great ef
12. cil conser Advarced Web Sites To ovemde cookie handing for individual Web sites dick the Edit button OK Cencel Figure 14 10 A dialog with affordances Help and affordances represent a bit of a paradox Nothing can clarify a confusing dialog box more than a couple of well plac anything else that requires reading They either try to figure out the task on their own or in the case of an error repeat the tz Chapter 14 Help and Application Embedded Support byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site CZD Next The Last Word This chapter began with the built in NET Framework support for Help and then began to expand on it with integrated help ai demonstrating that COM is far from gone even after the NET revolution Help strategies and systems vary widely depending on the intended audience and the application design In this chapter we t used in every scenario Instead it helps to keep some basic principles in mind O ooo O A help file should describe the purpose of various settings not how to use common controls No one needs an exp box The best affordances are descriptive labels not instructions No dialog box has the space or formatting power of a p The best error is one that doesn t happen It may take more effort in your code to disable or hide invalid options but Help must be context sensitive A confused user won t search through a Help file to find a relevant top
13. pageUser Controls Add lblLastName tabProperties TabPages Add pageFile tabProperties TabPages Add pageUser The output for this code is shown in Figure 6 16 E TabControl Example File Locations User Information First Name Matthew Last Name MacDonald Figure 6 16 The TabPage control Note Chapter 11 presents an example that allows you to add controls to a TabPage without needing to supply a Location property Instead the layout is managed automatically The TabControl is easy to work with and usually configured at design time Some of its members are described in Table 6 1 Chapter 6 Modern Controls byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 O Companion Web Site AD ar The Notifylcon In past programming frameworks it s been difficult to use a system tray icon In NET it s as easy as adding a simple Notify Note Like almost all invisible controls the Notifylcon doesn t inherit from the Control class In other words the list of members in Table 6 14 is essentially all you have to work with Table 6 14 Notifylcon Members Member Description ContextMenu The ContextMenu linked the system tray Icon The graphical icon that appears in the sy Text The tooltip text that appears above the sy Visible Set this to true to show the icon It defaul Click DoubleClick These events work the same as the Cont MouseDown MouseMove and MouseUp events The Notifylcon is an invisible control th
14. 16 GI Size 284 88 E Misc 100 Step 10 Value 0 Maximum Figure 8 1 Nondescript properties You can improve on this situation using attributes The example below adds a Description Category and DefaultValue attrik readability Description The current value between 0 and Maximum which sets the position of the progress bar Category Behavior DefaultValue 0 public int Value get return Bar Value set Chapter 8 Design Time Support for Custom Controls gt byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Testing Custom Controls Testing custom controls can sometimes be a little awkward Visual Studio NET provides several options You can add test forms directly to your control class projects and remove them when they are no longer needed or compiled DLL You can create a solution with two projects one that tests the control and one that uses the control However you behavior You can open two instances of Visual Studio NET one with the control project and one with the control test projec design time behavior You can use the specialized PropertyGrid control examined in this section Even if you don t follow one of these specialized approaches if an error occurs in your custom control code and the vb sour execution on the offending line Debugging Design Time Support If you test your custom control in a project with the control source code you are able to s
15. Chapter 8 Design Time Support for Custom Controls byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site ED ar Data Types and UlTypeEditors The Properties window does a solid job of providing support for all common data types Basic data types like strings and nu Properties window automatically provides a drop down list with the values from the enumeration For example consider the DisplayStyle property shown here public enum Display Standard SpecialDirectoryPictures AllDirectoryPictures private Display displayStyle public Display DisplayStyle get return displayStyle set displayStyle value The enumerated values are shown in the Properties window see Figure 8 15 Properties DirectoryTreei DirectoryTreeControl DirectoryTree Bi je Cursor Default gt DisplayStyie Standard Drive SpecialDirectoryPictures Font ForeColor 10 awGelecr Fala Chapter 8 Design Time Support for Custom Controls byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Licensing Custom Controls Licensing in the NET world is far more customizable and far less painful than it was with ActiveX controls The NET framew extending these classes you can grant or allow access to your control using ordinary NET code to check external resource Simple LIC File Licensing To best understand NET licensing it helps to start with a simple example using t
16. DataTable DefaultView property that follows doesn t change the actual information in the DataTable but it does ensure that only a subset of it will be shown DataSet dsStore new Dataset As lt Strnro RaadX ml Schama Annlication Stsart mnmPsth ctrra vad Chapter 9 Data Controls User Interfaces in Ce byMatthew MacDonald Windows Forres sn Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Data Binding Exposed The secret behind data binding lies in two objects that you don t ordinarily see BindingContext and CurrencyManager Every zero or more CurrencyManager objects Both objects are contained in the System Windows Forms namespace The CurrencyManager object shoulders the responsibility for tracking the user s position in the bound data and synchronizin properties including Count and the ever important Position which indicates an integer row index It performs its work auton The BindingContext object on the other hand creates CurrencyManager objects as required Depending on how you configu data sources or different positions in the same data source Figure 9 14 diagrams this relationship Windows Fore SL Auer arroy I A Binding Context A Currency Manager gt Collection EN Currency Manager 5 Data Table Figure 9 14 Data binding under the hood There are really only three reasons that you might want to access the data binding objects 0 To programmatically control record navigation 0
17. Forms controls 32 Web pages programming user interface for 20 WebWorks Publisher 537 What s This help 541 Widen method of GraphicsPath object 484 Width property of StatusBarPanel object 251 WIMP 8 Win32 color code 67 windows associating control with 31 dockable 429 434 multiple 434 with owner drawn controls 429 with timers 430 434 splitting 180 186 collapsible 184 185 for multiple views of same data 183 tiling and cascading in MDI application 405 406 Windows Microsoft graphics in 467 methods for drawing interface elements 498 wizards 5 Windows 534 Windows API 58 access to 81 82 in NET applications 59 vs NET platform 58 59 Windows Control Project 261 Windows controls 29 Windows Forms forms problems of earlier alternative 57 58 resource files for localizing 450 Windows XP forms styles 163 164 MonthCalendar control and 110 WindowsDefaultBound StartPosition value 148 WindowsDefaultLocation StartPosition value 148 WindowState property of Form class 145 WinHelp 532 WinHelp 533 534 Winres exe utility 452 wizards 551 form inheritance to create 193 194 WndProc method of Control object 82 ee A A PAS E E a DEN EEE ee a PA Index byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site CED f Next Index X XML for resx file 318 DataSet object and 52 List of Figures byMatthew MacDonald Apres
18. MacDonald is an author education and MCSD developer He s also a regular contributor to programming journals such as Inside Visual Basic and C Today and he s the author of several books about NET programming including User Interfaces in VB NET Windows Forms and Custom Controls Apress 2002 The Book of VB NET and ASP NET The Complete Reference
19. Manager A good example of a simple layout provider is shown with the following SingleLineFlow example It lays out one control per li display as with a TabPage container control public class SingleLineFlow private Control container private int margin public SingleLineFlow Control parent int margin this container parent this margin margin Attach the event handler container Layout new LayoutEventHandler UpdateLayout Refresh the layout UpdateLayout this null public int Margin get Chapter 11 Dynamic User Interface byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site ED army The Last Word This chapter considered dynamic user interfaces But rather than limit the discussion to questions about how to create contr do it the chapter examined some more radical approaches These techniques allow you to dynamically build a vector base It s remarkable what you can accomplish if you surrender the design time comfort of the Visual Studio NET IDE Many of these applications have specific niches and the techniques discussed here aren t suitable for all applications On tt chapter you need to use a dynamic interface without it you ll be trapped in an endless cycle of user interface tweaking and r a chance to write innovative code and that is always fun Chapter 12 GDI Basics byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site LD a C
20. So how do you know when to create a user control and when you need a fullfledged inherited control It s not always an ea few pointers that you should consider before embarking on a custom control project 0 User controls are easier and faster to program If you don t anticipate reusing the control frequently in different scene 0 If your control closely resembles an existing NET control it s probably best to create an inherited control With a us access to the members of the original control 0 Inherited controls provide a fine grained level of reuse User controls typically provide only a few members and thus D User controls are well suited if you want to ensure that a block of interface is recreated exactly in more than one sitt standardized appearance If you want to integrate more than one control you have two choices you can use composition with a user control or you ca a TreeView and ListView but make the links optional The application programmer can then use them separately or togethe however the application programmer can only control the size taken by the full user control The DirectoryTree Control The DirectoryTree control inherits from the standard TreeView and adds the features needed to display a hierarchical view o useful Perhaps most important it fills itself by reading subdirectories just in time This means that the control operates very quick actually shown The collapsed branches all have a dummy node inserted Every
21. To programmatically react to record navigation o To create a new BindingContext that allows you to store a different position to the same data Navigation with Data Binding To navigate programmatically you need to access the form s BindingContext object and modify its Position property Unfort you either need to store the data source in a form level variable or create a form level variable to track the binding object Th First create the variable for storing the BindingContext object private BindingManagerBase storeBinding Next in the Form Load event handler create the bindings and store a reference to the binding object The only new line is hic private void MultipleControlBinding_Load object sender System EventArgs e DataSet dsStore new DataSet dsStore ReadXmlSchema Application StartupPath store xsd dsStore ReadXml Application StartupPath store xml cboModelName DataSource dsStore Tables Products nhaMadalNama Di cr savMoamhoar MadalNama r Chapter 9 Data Controls byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 O Companion Web Site The DataGrid Control The DataGrid is perfect for those who want a single data control that can do everything on its own Even with some impressi row If you need a perfect super grid control you are likely to find that many custom options will soon appear on the networ To use the DataGrid you only need to assign a table or DataSet to its DataSource pr
22. a command line lurks behi A command line interface is the power user s dream Of course even power users have to learn somewhere and most forge The command line is in many respects the original way of doing things and it s arguable that it s not so much an interface began as the basis for operating systems like DOS see Figure 1 1 and UNIX were the basis for early database application Command Prampt lo x pit indov at Jer p 21 2688 t Ir Figure 1 1 The archetypal command line interface For example the Visual Studio NET interface provides a Command Window that lets you interact with the IDE or execute s like auto complete it s still a basic command line interface see Figure 1 2 Vile Mevb lank Solution Edir Adalvenslandie PRESEA NT Figure 1 2 The command line in Visual Studio NET Command line interfaces are characterized by the following traits D Ultimate control Users can do anything in any order so long as they remember the secret codes 0 Ultimate lack of structure Users not only have to remember what to do but what order to do it in In DOS just me assumes that each operation is atomic and it doesn t associate one task with another 0 A hands off treatment of user With a few minor exceptions there s no helpful prompting tips or guidance D No metaphors This makes it easy to grasp the basic process type in words press Enter which never changes example if you know how to copy
23. a danger It potentially encourages you to mix in a great amount of additional material through the form s event han Of course there are finer points to perfecting encapsulation Custom controls which handle some basic user interface opera you keep encapsulation in mind These techniques are not all immediately obvious In this book I ll return to the principle of Use Enumerations and Resource Classes User interface controls often require sets of constants and trying to hard code them is a tempting trap Instead you should example you can define enumerations that help you manage and identify different levels of nodes in a TreeView control se your program Extraneous details like SQL statements should also be strictly confined to distinct resource classes Use Collections Objects are only as good as the way you can access them On its own a data object is a group of related information By u an entire set of complex data making it easier to share with other parts of your program Restrain from Sharing Control References It s easy to pass control references to helper methods For example you can create utility classes that automatically fill con interface tasks can make it extremely difficult to make even simple modifications to the user interface As a rule of thumb k Define a Data Transfer Plan The single greatest challenge when creating a reusable object framework is deciding how to retrieve data and insert it into tt need to to
24. and size of a control using the Point and Size structures System Drawing Point pt new System Drawing Point pt X 300 The control will be 300 pixels from the left pt Y 500 The control will be 500 pixels from the top ctrl Location pt System Drawing Size sz new System Drawing Size sz Width 500 sz Height 60 ctrl Size sz Just for fun set another control to have the same siz ctrl2 Size ctrl Size By importing the System Drawing namespace and using some handy constructors you can simplify this code considerably Chapter 3 Control Class Basics byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Color Every control defines a ForeColor and BackColor property For different controls these properties have slightly different mee background color is the area behind it These values default to the Windows system configured settings Colors are specified as Color structures from the System Drawing namespace It s extremely easy to create a color object k 0 An ARGB alpha red green blue color value You specify each value as integer An environment setting from the current color scheme You choose the correspondingly named property from the S A predefined NET color name You choose the correspondingly named property from the Color class An HTML color name You specify this value as a string using the Color Translator class An OLE color code You specify t
25. binding is easy painless The basic principle is the same for binding collections of custom objects However instead of specifying a property name wi application The result is shown in Figure 9 7 EN Data List Binding ER Extracting Tool Escape Vehicle Water Communications Device Persuasive Pencil Multi Purpose Rubber Band Universal Repair System Effective Flashlight The Incredible Versatile Paperclip Toaster Bost Multi Purpose Towelette Mighty Mighty Pen Perfect ision Glasses Pocket Protector Rocket Pack Counterfeit Creation wallet Global Navigational System Cloaking Device Indentity Confusion Device Ultra Violet Attack Defender Guard Dog Pacifier Survival Bar Figure 9 7 Binding to a DataView DataSet dsStore new DataSet dsStore ReadXmlSchema Application StartupPath store xsd dsStore ReadXml Application StartupPath store xml lstName DataSource dsStore Tables Products lstName DisplayMember ModelName Note The ADO NET examples in this chapter read DataSets from XML as this approach doesn t clutter the examples with data access logic and doesn t require any special relational database product The data aware control examples later in this chapter separate the data logic into a discrete class which allows this code to be completely independent of the data binding logic In this example the code appears to bind to a DataTable object but it actually binds to the
26. but you won t learn about the intricate details lik controls and user interface coding in the chapters that follow Chapter 2 Designing with Classes and Tiers byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Classes and Objects Today it s generally accepted that the best way to design applications is by using discrete reusable components called ob A typical NET program is little more than a large collection of class definitions When you start the program your code cre are defined in other referenced assemblies and in the NET class library which is itself just a collection of useful assemblies The Roles of Classes It s important to remember that although all classes are created in the same way in your code they can serve different logici o Classes can model real world entities For example many introductory books teach object oriented programmin directly correspond to an actual thing in the real world 0 Classes can serve as useful programming abstractions For example you might use a Rectangle class to store WinMessage class to hold information about a Windows message These classes don t need to correspond to tangi your code Arguably this is the most common type of class 0 Classes can collect related functions Some classes are just a collection of static methods that you can use with functions and might have names like GraphicsManipulator or FileManagement In some cases a helper class is jus related o
27. classic three tier design Instead it binds database details directly to user ir among different applications or environments you are entirely on your own It s proprietary A fine tuned data binding solution is great until your organization decides to upgrade to a newer pri because much of the logic is hard coded in proprietary designer or project files NET provides some remarkable data binding enhancements that just might change your mind The first two obstacles lack framework The questions of application design and proprietary standards may still apply depending on your goals Certainly use of data binding still makes it extremely difficult to port your code to a non Microsoft platform Chapter 9 Data Controls User intertaces in Cr byMatthew MacDonald sn Apress 2002 Companion Web Site acy CEE Basic Data Binding Almost every control in NET supports data binding in one form or another However different controls support data binding to the TextBox Text Button Text or PictureBox Image property although there are other possibilities as you ll discover sho control like ListBox or CheckedListBox can hold an entire list of data or the contents of a single field from a database Last You don t need to create any database code to start working with data binding NET allows controls to bind to any class the O Arrays You can use the ArrayList Visual Basic s default Collection class and a custom collection
28. click was made in an appropriate area This chapter introduces several example controls and shows how they confront these problems and add a few visual treats Chapter 13 GDI Controls byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site ay CEE Simple GDI Controls The first type of GDI control that might occur to you to use is one that simply wraps one of the GDI drawing features you renders a closed figure depending on the properties you set Or you might want to create a special type of label that paints i properties That s the type of example considered next with the GradientLabel control A Gradient Label The first example presents a special label that allows the developer to add a gradient background by choosing two colors TI of gradient fill through an additional property The GradientLabel control is a quick and painless way to add a label with a gra code The GradientLabel class inherits from UserControl and overrides the drawing logic This isn t necessary it could simply inher it easy to work with the GradientLabel class in a test project rather than requiring a separate DLL and client test program public class GradientLabel System Windows Forms UserControl Code omitted The first step is to create the required properties In this case you need to store information about the text to be displayed o private string text private Color colorA Color LightBlue private Colo
29. control for 104 FileNameEditor 337 filenames converting for storage in database record 371 fill brushes for 490 493 for line 489 FillClosedCurve method of Graphics object 483 FillEllipse method of Graphics object 483 FillPath method of Graphics object 521 FillPie method of Graphics object 483 FillPolygon method of Graphics object 483 FillRectangle method of Graphics object 483 FillRectangles method of Graphics object 483 FillRegion method of Graphics object 483 filtering properties and events for custom controls 327 329 FindForm method of Control object 71 FirstDayOfWeek property of MonthCalendar control 110 flicker 473 reducing 477 floating toolbars 425 428 FlowLayout manager 460 focus 72 74 Focus method of Control object 74 focus rectangle drawing 498 Focused property of Control object 74 Focuseditem property of ListView control 211 Font property of Control object 69 of StatusBar control 250 FontDialog 170 FontEditor 337 FontHeight property of Control class 70 fonts antialiasing with 476 477 converting string to object 358 determining installed 70 for drawing text 469 for owner drawn menus 124 recommendation for applications 69 substitution by NET platform 70 FontViewer utility 70 ForeColor property of controls 66 ForeFront Help Center 537 form based help 542 543 limitations 546 A A E Index byMatthew MacDonald Ap
30. far in this book including the custom TreeViews al Owner drawn controls generally use GDI drawing routines to generate their interfaces from scratch Because of thi require the most work and provide the most customizable user interface You ll see them in Chapter 13 Additionally in this chapter you consider extender providers which aren t necessarily controls at all These componi user interface The distinction above is slightly exaggerated For example you can create a user control that uses GDI drawing with other you can inherit from one of the intermediary classes to get a different level of support For example a control that contains o provide scrolling might inherit from ScrollableControl Chapter 7 Custom Controls byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 o Companion Web Site Control Projects When designing a custom control you could create the control class directly in your application project In this case you ll r add flexibility reuse your control and add design time support you need to create a dedicated project for your custom cont assembly that contains the control classes The Class Library Project Typically you ll create your control as either a Class Library Project for most custom control projects or a Windows Contro project type does is configure the default references and the namespaces that are initially imported into your project The im stand alone executable This DLL can then be shared with an
31. may not stop your application from performing i some techniques that optimize drawing with GDI surfaces Painting and Resizing One often overlooked fact about automatic repainting is that it only affects the portion of the window that is obscured This is follows which paints an ellipse that is the same size as the containing window The result is pictured in Figure 12 3 private void forml_Paint object sender System Windows Forms PaintEventArgs e Pen drawingPen new Pen Color Red 15 e Graphics DrawEllipse DrawingPen New Rectangle new Point 0 0 this ClientSize Figure 12 3 Filling a form with an ellipse When you resize this window you ll discover that the painting code isn t working correctly The newly exposed portions of th shown in Figure 12 4 Chapter 12 GDI Basics byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 O Companion Web Site The Graphics Class The majority of the GDI drawing smarts is concentrated in the Graphics class Table 12 1 describes the basic set of Graph Table 12 1 Basic Graphics Class Members Member CompositingMode and CompositingQuality InterpolationMode SmoothingMode and TextRenderingHint Clear Dispose FromHdc FromHwnd and Fromlmage GetHdc and RemoveHac IsVisible MeasureString Save and Restore SetClip The Graphics class also provides a slew of methods for drawing specific shapes images or text Most of these met
32. new Menultem mnuNew Text New Menultem mnuOpen new Menultem mnuOpen Text Open Chapter 4 Classic Controls User Interfaces in Ce byMatthew MacDonald Windows Forres sn Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Owner Drawn Menus If this is your first look at NET menus you may be disappointed to see that they don t support the common Windows conve you could purchase a third party control but luckily the logic is easy to implement on your own All it requires is a dash of C The steps for creating an owner drawn menu are as follows 1 Set the OwnerDraw property for the menu items to true Note that even when you do this you can still see the ment 2 Handle the Measureltem event This is where you tell NET how much space you need to display the menu item 3 Handle the Drawltem event This is where you actually write the output for the item to the screen In our case this c The first step is easy enough The second step requires a little bit more work To specify the required size you need to sett However the size required depends a great deal on the font and text you use Fortunately the MeasureltemEventArgs class method This method returns a Size structure that indicates the space required To keep your code manageable you should use a single event handler to measure all the menu items In our example this private void mnu_Measureltem object sender System Windows Forms MeasureltemEventArgs e
33. properties aren t a part of the b check boxes and radio buttons It allc ImageAlign Allows you to align a picture to any si controls ResizeRedraw Indicates whether the control should a CreateGraphics Creates a System Drawing Graphics explained in Chapter 12 Invalidate and Refresh Triggers a repaint of the control Paint event Occurs when the control is redrawn F Resize event Occurs when the control is resized ju You can create an Image object using the static Image FromFile method which reads a standard bitmap format like a BM buttonl Image Image FromFile Application StartupPath mypic bmp The Image class provides its own set of properties and methods Some of the most interesting include RotateFlip which ch object of the specified size that condenses the information from the original Image Image myImage myThumbnail myImage Image FromFile Application StartupPath mypic bmp Rotate by 270 degrees and flip about the Y axis myImage RotateFlip RotateFlipType Rotate270FlipY Be ng AAA a ee aaa Y A IA az age sa A mee Chapter 3 Control Class Basics byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 O Companion Web Site Low Level Members The NET framework hides the low level ugliness of the Windows API but it doesn t render it inaccessible This is a major ad capabilities For example if you want to use a DLL or Windows API function that requires a window handle you can just
34. retrieve the con immediately before you use it Changing some properties can cause the control to be recreated and receive a new handle You ve probably also realized by now that low level Windows messages are abstracted away in NET controls and replaced that doesn t have a corresponding event you can handle it directly by overriding the PreProcessMessage method You ca Application AddMessageFilter method This book focuses on pure NET programming and won t get into most of these tricks which are really workarounds based members described in Table 3 7 Table 3 7 Low Level Members Member Description Handle Provides an IntPtr structure a 32 bit i RecreatingHandle Set to true while the control is being r GetStyle and SetStyle Sets or gets a control style bit Gener PreProcessMessage These methods are involved in proce cessCmdkKey these methods and use them to proc ProcessKeyMessage ProcessKeyPreview and WndProc Chapter 3 Control Class Basics byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site ED army The Last Word This chapter provided a lightning tour through the basics of NET controls including how they interact receive messages pr the System Drawing namespace for creating and managing colors fonts images and more The next chapter puts this higl Chapter 4 Classic Controls byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Chapter 4 Classic Controls
35. that is used by derived controls for a variety of purposes For a text box the Text controls like labels command buttons or forms the Text property refers to static descriptive text displayed as a title or cap The font of a control s text is defined by the Font property which uses an instance of the System Drawing Font class Note about the font family point size and styles like bold and italic Xou can create a font with one of the 13 constructors ctrl Font new Font Tahoma 8 FontStyle Bold Tip A traditional default font for Windows programs is often Microsoft Sans Serif However newer applications since Windows 98 consistently use the slightly more attractive Tahoma font which is also better for input as it distinguishes between characters like a lowercase I and uppercase You should use the Tahoma font in your applications A Control FontHeight property is also provided which returns the height of your chosen font in pixels This setting allows yot example you could manually space lines the appropriate amount when drawing text directly onto a form background Note that font families are set using a string rather than a type safe enumerated property If you try to create an object using the Microsoft Sans Serif font An error does not occur You may want to explicitly check the Font Name property to check if To determine what fonts are installed on the system you can enumerate through them with the System Draw
36. the first place For example O Limit the number of characters a text box can accept and use the key press event to make sure invalid characters O Use drop down lists when the user is selecting one of several predefined choices 0 Disable or grey out invalid options In the case of a complex application with many menu options and toolbars y elements You see examples of both techniques in later chapters Tip Many of these options represent a tradeoff between usability and maintainability For example enforcing field length restrictions in a text box can cause quite a headache if the allowed length of the underlying database field changes A better approach may be to dynamically determine the length of the field from the database when the form first loads This ensures that you won t need to recompile your code when the database changes but it also forces you to write and test additional code Restricting the User s Choices Another common myth in user interface programming is that the more advanced an application is the more options it should feature you should do both and allow the user to choose Unfortunately this type of logic deciding not to decide is shirkinc the application and may not even know that a configuration option is available or how it works Adding more options dramat installations The basic rule is that if something appears more complicated it is more complicated Adding gratuitous options can make s a microwave I
37. the insight of experier Custom Controls takes a close look at all the ingredients you can use to design state of the art application interfaces It alsc framework for Windows You don t just learn about anchoring and docking you work with examples that show document vie controls You also learn how to design irregularly shaped forms unshackle data binding and build an integrated help systen In short this is the sort of NET book that would want to read as a professional developer It s a book that goes beyond the generation of software applications And seeing as you are reading this introduction you ve probably already realized that th Acknowledgments This book has been comparatively speaking a lot of fun to write As a result have a long list of people to thank Gary Cornell never ceases to amaze me with his ability to respond to emails mere seconds after they ve departed from my lt thanks to a number of other individuals at Apress who helped everything move swiftly and smoothly They include Sofia Mar directly Gordon Henshaw performed the technical review for the C edition of this book and Gordon Wilmot performed the technical and her unerring light touch helped guarantee the final polished product owe a heartfelt thanks to all Finally I d never write any book without the support of my loving wife her parents and my parents who started this whole m Introduction byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Sit
38. this application ordinarily you end up creating a great deal of or later these frequent modifications will introduce unexpected errors or make the program difficult to change or extend for A more successful way to model this problem is to create a program that constructs its interface according to information in list control with the description for each also read from the database When the user chooses items from a category the wl with Visual Studio 6 and text boxes are added dynamically for quantity see Figure 11 13 45 Cateppry lema MD Se tra eco a pucha wer interface for stc and retirees of wut lt harce recone much Notes 0 ron rites anc secte search of ach Manta pe Lore Abe tare are Lo tay aan tes wes peach and anna ato took Figure 11 13 The dynamic ordering window The pricing information is also read from a database However the pricing is not product specific Instead every product ha schemes and gives each one a descriptive name The Pricing_Products table maps these two tables together assigning e lt 11 14 Pricing_Products aa Bi du PricingSet ID Price Figure 11 14 Pricing table structure This application would typically ship with a special admin tool that is little more than a glorified database editor It would allo system is great for salespeople who love to invent new price structures for every customer Note Chapter 11 Dynamic User Interface byMatthew M
39. this can slow down performance Some of the structures in the class library include Int32 DateTime and graphics ingredients like Point Size and Rectangle Chapter 2 Designing with Classes and Tiers byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Interacting with a Control One interesting and little known fact about NET controls is that they provide two different forms of interaction The first and For example imagine you have a text box that s designed for numeric entry and you want to examine every key press to m customized text box and override the OnKeyPress method to add this extra verification logic public class NumericTextBox System Windows Forms TextBox protected override void OnKeyPress KeyPressEventArgs e base OnKeyPress e if char IsControl e KeyChar amp amp char IsDigit e KeyChar e Handled true The OnKeyPress method is invoked automatically by the Windows Forms engine when a key is pressed in a TextBox cont isn t the Handled flag is set to true which cancels all further processing effectively making sure that the character will neve This design pattern is useful if you use a number of controls with extremely similar behavior If on the other hand you need consider a button control You could react to a button click by creating a special class for every button on your application a encapsulated it would quickly become completely
40. time a directory branch is expanded the inl directories are read from the disk You see a variation of this technique to allow efficient data access in Chapter 9 The full code listing follows Notice that the currently selected drive is stored as a single character string technically a Cha currently highlighted directory That approach would provide better control for the application programmer but it would comp using System using System IO using System Windows Forms Chapter 7 Custom Controls byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Custom Extender Providers Extender providers were first introduced in Chapter 4 as interesting components that extend other controls Examples are th error icon and the HelpProvider which invokes context sensitive Help on a control s behalf when the F1 key is pressed Pro contemplating a custom provider Nonetheless custom providers can achieve some remarkable tricks In this section demonstrate two extender providers c Help icon Both of these classes are found in the ExtenderProviderControls project provided with the online samples The tes Tip To create an extender provider it s easiest to create the custom provider class in a class library project compile it into a DLL file and then reference the DLL file from another project by choosing Customize Toolbox In fact this approach is generally the easiest way to integrate inherited controls When you add the refe
41. with embedded help and user agents User Interfaces in C Windows Forms and Custom Controls goes beyond simply covering the Windows Forms namespaces by combining a careful treatment of the API with a detailed discussion of good user interface design principles The combination will show you how to create the next generation of software applications using the NET Framework After reading User Interfaces in C Windows Forms and Custom Controls you ll know how to design state of the art application interfaces as well as how to extend NET controls create data binding strategies program graphics and much more This book contains the following O0 An overview of how to design elegant user interfaces the average user can understand O A comprehensive examination of the user interface controls and classes in NET O0 Best practices and design tips for coding user interfaces and integrating help Although this book isn t a reference it does contain detailed discussions about every user interface element you ll use on a regular basis But you won t just learn how to use NET controls you ll learn how and why to extend them with owner drawn menus irregularly shaped forms and custom controls tailored for specific types of data As a developer you need to know more than how to add a control to a window You also need to know how to create an entire user interface framework that s scalable flexible and reusable About the Author Matthew
42. you need to col Studio NET to create their interface include To design a static interface It s far easier to create an interface that won t change for long periods of time with pe It hides the ugly code details These are difficult to manage due to the sheer number of lines NET controls do n property set statements to fully configure your controls It saves time The design time environment makes it faster to create and maintain an interface Changes can be ar On the other hand there are some things that user interfaces designed in the IDE don t handle well 0 If the interface must change according to certain distinct rules In this case you may find yourself writing a gr all its text translated to different languages In this case it may be a good point to consider a more radical solution more manageable If you need to standardize the consistency of similar but not identical visual elements like a common dialo to creating a custom form layout engine If you want to create a program that allows the user to create an interface In some cases your product mig non programmer to define or modify some aspects of the interface If you are designing a drawing or diagramming tool You could use the GDI drawing features described later to a vector based diagramming tool These are the types of problems that the discussion centers on in this chapter Chapter 11 Dynamic User Interface User intertaces in Cr byMatthew MacDonald sn Apre
43. 1 422 document class 412 416 OrderGridView class 416 418 OrderPrintPreview class 418 420 parent form class 422 424 organizational controls 104 OwnedForms property of Form class 162 owner drawn controls 260 benefits 518 dockable windows with 429 GDI for 188 overriding OnPaint method for 467 owner drawn menus 122 130 Owner property of Form class 162 OwnerDraw property of Menultem class 122 ownership of forms 161 163 Index byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Index P Padding property of TabControl 256 PageSetupDialog 170 PageUnit property of Graphics object 485 Paint event handler 469 Paint event of Control object 80 Paint method of DataGridColumnStyle class 383 painting and debugging 480 optimization 470 480 double buffering 477 480 rendering mode and antialiasing 475 477 and resizing 470 471 window portions 472 475 sessions 466 469 and refreshing 467 469 painting programs 443 PaintValue method overriding for gradient fill thumbnail image 507 508 of UlTypeEditor class 339 Panel control 104 property to hide or show 431 PanelClick event for StatusBar 252 panels docking with 181 183 parent form class in MDI application 422 424 Parent property of Control object 71 ParentForm property of ContainerControl class 154 ParenthesizePropertyName control property attribute 313 PartialPush proper
44. 26 BeginEdit method of node 215 BeginUpdate method of ListView control 219 Bezier curve drawing 551 binding See data binding Binding object events 366 BindingContext object 373 374 creating additional 379 380 bitmap format drawing program 443 Image FromFile method to read 80 for TextureBrush 493 494 for Toolbox 316 317 bitmap thumbnail viewer 276 289 enhancements and threading 286 289 events 284 286 private variables 278 refresh options 282 testing 283 284 BoldedDates property of MonthCalendar control 109 border hatched for Panel control 431 432 for selected PictureBox 285 BorderLayout manager 460 BorderStyle property of StatusBarPanel object 251 of ToolBar control 243 Bounds property of Screen class 150 Break property of Menultem class 115 breakpoints 322 A Ee REGEN a ea Sn E GEM E he Index byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Index C Calendar control in ASP NET 331 CalendarFont property of DateTimePicker control 107 CalendarForeColor property of DateTimePicker control 107 CalendarMonthBackground property of DateTimePicker control 107 CalendarTitleBackColor property of DateTimePicker control 107 CalendarTitleForeColor property of DateTimePicker control 107 CalendarTrailingForeColor property of DateTimePicker control 107 CancelButton for form 146 CanExtend method of IExtenderProvider interfa
45. Events for Reacting to the Mouse Table 3 6 Graphics Related Members Table 3 7 Low Level Members Chapter 4 Classic Controls Table 4 1 ToolTipProvider Members Table 4 2 Label Properties Table 4 3 LinkLabel Properties Table 4 4 LinkLabel Link Properties Table 4 5 Special Button Members Table 4 6 TextBox Members Table 4 7 List Control Properties Table 4 8 Special ComboBox Properties Table 4 9 DateTimePicker Properties Table 4 10 MonthCalendar Properties Table 4 11 Members of the Abstract Menu Class Table 4 12 ContextMenu Members Table 4 13 MainMenu Members Table 4 14 Menultem Members Table 4 15 NET Validation Table 4 16 Regular Expression Metacharacters TI A o A __ ee eee User Interfaces in C Windows Forms and Custom Controls byMatthew MacDonald ISBN 1590590457 Apress 2002 586 pages Including a comprehensive examination of the user interface controls and classes in NET this resource provides an overview of how to design elegant user interfaces the average user can understand Companion Web Site Table of Contents Back Cover Back Cover 0 Describes the architecture of a well planned user interface everything from data binding strategies to multiple document view architecture using MDI O0 Teaches GDI essentials such as hit testing irregularly shaped forms owner drawn menus and animated controls 0 Shows how to integrate intelligence into your user interfaces
46. Internet Explorer is an SDI application if you want to open several pages at once the pages SDI application although it was one of the earliest MDI examples in the Windows world Most other word processors and do a unique user interface with tabbed and grouped windows the basic principle hosting several different windows in one large c The debate between SDI and MDI is sometimes heated There is no clear standard although Microsoft officially states that user it is designed to serve If you are dealing with advanced users who need to manage several views simultaneously an N you are creating a simple editor for a novice user it s probably clearer to follow a simpler SDI design like that used in Micros Types of MDI Applications There are essentially two types of MDI applications D Document applications These applications use a single application window to contain multiple identical documen several files at once 0 Workspace applications These applications provide several different windows which correspond to different feat program that allows you to simultaneously browse through a list of users enter new projects and report software bl able to perform one task at a time Chapter 10 MDI Interfaces and Workspaces byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site MDI Essentials In NET there is no sharp distinction between ordinary windows and MDI windows In fact you can transform any window ini a window b
47. Modeling Language diagram 275 for BitmapViewer 283 Undo method of TextBox control 96 UnitCost variable formatting data before binding 367 369 UNIX command line interface 3 UpdateDisplay method for bitmap thumbnail viewer 281 UpdateLayout method for layout manager 461 usability tests by Microsoft 11 UseMnemonic property of Label control 91 user controls 269 276 bitmap thumbnail viewer 276 289 creating 269 270 inheritance 269 270 vs inherited controls 290 progress indicators 271 276 size of 270 user input validation 135 142 user interface design See also dynamic user interface complexity 15 17 creativity vs convention 10 15 data driven 46 database separation from 387 388 help integration 553 history 3 10 command line 3 5 GUI 8 10 menu driven model 7 8 question answer model 5 7 importance 518 inductive 17 qualities 3 responsibilities of 2 3 restrictions on user 17 20 tasks 1 for the Web 20 user permissions database table to map levels 453 hiding or disabling controls based on 457 UserControl class 272 GradientLabel class inheritance from 502 users knowledge of 14 15 response to agents 553 restrictions on 17 20 BT Se A A hae ee BZ ig eT a o A Index byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Index V Validate method of LicenseManager class 342 Validated event 135 136 Validating e
48. Some possible status bar information 0 O 0 O Information about the application mode or operating context For example if your application can be run by r user level e g Administrator Mode Similarly a financial application might provide a label indicating U S Currency Information about the application status For example a database application might start by displaying Ready o database This technique avoids stalling advanced users with a confirmation window where they need to click an O Information about a background process For example Microsoft Word provides some information about print o Information about the current document For example most word processors use a status bar to display the cu display ancillary information like the total number of files in a folder These are some of the most useful ways to use a status bar Status bars should never be used to display the current time tray anyway Although a status bar can be docked to any side as set by the Dock property it is always placed at the bottom of the wind Chapter 6 Modern Controls byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 D Companion Web Site Basic StatusBar There are two ways to use a status bar You can display a single piece of text or a combination of panels that can contain t E StatusBar Example DE E Figure 6 13 The simplest possible status bar statusBar ShowPanels false statusBar Text Ready You can also tweak the Font f
49. UDA get Arien D nereng serveme Oruro en 1935000 0 wer oT ae Writ Vile aper 20 3 vn AFIFI ad ET Pom Dos TE we e Erw cat ES Aephestars Orem 1 wine Spates IN INTI Dita Da 103 os ANDA lade De am vee gt mm MITA Pad Sam Come iemn 10 we AID Clade Bird wien eet ome EUER wi TIERE VE ore NUT ade one yo av ware MGT 1 ads DIE re re eo pwd RD Figure 6 3 Configuring assembly settings in NET Chapter 6 Modern Controls byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Basic ListView The ListView control is most often used for a multicolumn list of items It actually supports four distinct modes that you have 0 Largelcon which displays full sized 32 x 32 pixel icons with a title beneath each one Items are displayed from le 0 Smalllcon which displays small 16 x 16 pixel icons with descriptive text at the right Items are displayed from lef 0 List which displays small icons with descriptive text at the right It s the same as Smalllcon except it fills items fror O Details which displays the familiar multicolumn layout Each item appears on a separate line and the leftmost colu information per item Tip In Visual Studio NET the ListView control uses a designer that allows you to add items and subitems To use it just click the ellipses next to the Items property in the Property Window It s quite impressive but won t discuss it in this chapter as pure code gives a clearer
50. User Interfaces in C Windows Forms and Custom Controls Matthew MacDonald NET User Interfaces with G Windows Forms and Custom Controls What the manuals doni sell you gt Loaded with hundreds of tips and techniques gt Written by an author wich experience a Apress Apress Copyright 2002 Matthew MacDonald All rights reserved No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mecha prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher pbk 1 59059 045 7 Trademarked names may appear in this book Rather than use a trademark symbol with every occurrence of a trademarked intention of infringement of the trademark Technical Reviewer Gordon Henshaw Editorial Directors Dan Appleman Gary Cornell Jason Gilmore Simon Hayes Karen Watterson John Zukowski Managing Editor Grace Wong Copy Editor Anne Friedman Production Editor Kari Brooks Project Manager Sofia Marchant Compositor Diana Van Winkle Van Winkle Design Artist Kurt Krames Indexer Nancy A Guenther Cover Designer Kurt Krames Manufacturing Manager Tom Debolski Marketing Manager Stephanie Rodriguez Distributed to the book trade in the United States by Springer Verlag New York Inc 175 Fifth Avenue New York NY 1001 Heidelberg Germany User Interfaces in C Windows Forms and Custom Controls byMatthew MacDonald ISBN 1590590457 Apress 2002 586 pages
51. a file in UNIX you still don t know how to delete it Todav a command line mode ra la still turn uno in one of voiir ser interfaces hiit it s nlikalv Chapter 1 Creating Usable Interfaces byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Creativity vs Convention Many user interface projects are sidetracked when they meet up with the developer s need for creativity Unfortunately an aj from the user s point of view how it works Ask yourself this question would car manufacturers allow the same degree of creativity that some developers take in applic impossible to imagine a car manufacturer taking the same kind of liberties Every year new car models appear that have be modern It doesn t take much inspection to see that the air conditioners and radios always work almost exactly the same as configuration is generally unchanged and the controls for starting stopping and slowing the car down are indistinguishable Even in the better applications of today this consistency is rare If you install a new program on your computer are you con printer or give you a chance to tweak some setting first And exactly where do you find the menu command for that all impo Tip On the good side some conventions are well followed like using Esc to exit a dialog box Other conventions have taken over just because Microsoft enforces them like the editing commands built in to standard controls like the text box and the wa
52. abel control 93 LinkBehavior property of LinkLabel control 93 LinkColor property of LinkLabel control 93 LinkData property of LinkLabel Link object 94 LinkLabel control 91 94 Links property of LinkLabel control 93 LinkVisited property of LinkLabel control 93 List control 97 101 data binding 352 353 to complex objects 353 356 DataBindings collection 358 filling with known colors 68 69 Selectedindex event 468 List for ListView View enumeration 210 ListBox control 97 anchoring 175 IntegralHeight property 174 ListView control 206 217 adding information 216 basic members 211 and data binding 397 398 vs DataGrid object 48 label editing 215 216 reordering columns 215 A is e e Index byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Index main menus 111 attaching 118 MainMenu class 114 for synchronizing with ToolBar 247 249 manifest file for Windows XP styles of forms 163 164 Manual StartPosition value 148 marquee label 509 512 Mask property of controls 297 masked TextBox control 294 297 master detail forms 377 378 DataGrid control for 381 382 MaxDate property of DateTimePicker control 108 of MonthCalendar control 110 MaxDropDownltems property for ComboBox control 100 MaximizeBox property of Form class 144 maximized MDI child forms 402 Maximum property of NumericUpDown control 104 maximum size
53. acDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Control Layout Engines As you ve seen the NET forms architecture provides support for laying out controls using coordinates in a grid This approac environment However there are times when grid layout is not necessarily the best approach For example you may need a container co accommodate the width of the largest control or shrinking them to fit the size of the container to name just two possibilities you use the same layout logic in different containers for example forms group boxes and tabs To provide a more generic A layout manager is a class that dictates the layout of child controls in a container Ideally a layout manager can be reused Note If you ve programmed with Java before the idea of layout managers is nothing new Some of the layout managers provided for Java containers include FlowLayout similar to a word processor BorderLayout which divides the screen into five zones CardLayout like a stack of cards layered on top of each other GridLayout which allows one component per equal sized cell and GridBagLayout which adds support for variable control sizes and location with a grid Generally a layout manager connects itself to the action by listening for layout events from the container control It then iter layout manager this may mean ignoring the Location property and even the Size property of each control It could also invo The SingleLineFlow Layout
54. ack and forth at will which is a mind expanding trick never before allowed this IsMdiContainer true When displayed as an MDI container the form s surface becomes a dark gray open area where other windows can be hoste Child frmChild new Child frmChild MdiParent this frmChild Show Ideally you perform this task before you display the window but with NET you don t need to In fact you can even have mo the MdiParent property Figure 10 1 shows two different views of an MDI parent with a contained MDI child Figure 10 1 An MDI Child One of the most unusual features of NET MDI parents is that they can display any type of control Traditionally MDI parent NET however you can add any other type of control and it remains fixed in place or anchored and docked suspended al This trick can be used to create a bizarre window like that shown in Figure 10 2 or a unique type of floating tool window altt FE MDI Parent SEE TE MDI Child A Suspended Button Chapter 10 MDI Interfaces and Workspaces byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Document View Architecture Many developers will recognize document view architecture as a staple of MFC design In NET the emphasis is less critice our refresh example and don t require an additional separation between the document and the view Tasks that typically re On the other hand there are several scenarios that are particularly w
55. anel to resize themselves to fit its contents Thi Figure 5 20 shows an example taken from Chapter 9 which uses a customized TreeView ListView explorer imbedding Control Data FS Communcatios z 1D 370 Eg Deception Name MRi Arocso Tovelerto J Travel El Protection Past bara home vated var 3 ana date Modo pon E Porat Protector Rocket Pach igttnety t Qu dry Seles Ue ieee ol dl and eqip has mora uses y a spys day B uv Voit Attack Defender than a Swiss Army te The perfect al B Gard Dog Pacher vard tac whe undercover in the locker B cabal Paty Pal ole room serves as bowel shield cy tse a Parte Prvok Facial Tios sm 1 ded defensive woapon ship and s F Munkons emergency ood sauce Hendy ba gear for the Toaster Boat Monogram incuded wall purchase price E Tods H Grae Chapter 5 Forms User Interfaces in Ce byMatthew MacDonald Windows Forres sn Apress 2002 Companion Web Site irregularly Shaped Forms Irregularly shaped forms are often the trademark of cutting edge consumer applications like photo editors movie makers an shaped form is almost effortless thanks to the new GDI model that s included as part of the NET framework To create a simple shaped window in NET all you need to do is create a form and assign a new shape to its Region prope create a Region but the easiest is by using the GraphicsPath class which allows you to build up a complex shape out of a First begin by imp
56. apy For example imagine you are using a DateTimePicker control which allows the user to choose the start date for a database information Chapter 4 Classic Controls byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Menus Applications use two kinds of menus main and context Main menus provide a comprehensive set of options just below a w up menus that provide additional options Typically context menus appear when the user right clicks a user interface elem menus but they tend to be much simpler Consider the partial menu shown in Figure 4 11 In NET this menu is modeled as a collection of objects as shown in Figur El Menu Example E E SEN Edit Help Figure 4 11 A sample menu RainMenu Class Menultews Collection Menulten Class Merulten Class Penultes Class represents file represents f it represents Help Menultems Collection Menultens Collection Memultens Collection Menulten Class Nenulten Class Nenulten Class representa hew representa Open represents Sarwe Marultens Collection Menultems Collection Manultens Collection Figure 4 12 Menu objects in NET The next code snippet shows how to create the first part of this menu all the entries contained under the File heading Ger the custom menu designer Build the menu starting with the deepest nested level in this case New Open and Save Menultem mnuNew
57. at appears in the component tray when added at design time In many cases it s mo application that loads into the system tray and waits quietly monitoring for some system event or waiting for user actions example of this technique is shown in Chapter 11 Chapter 6 Modern Controls byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site CD EE The Last Word In this chapter you ve toured some of the most important controls used in typical Windows user interfaces Even as l ve intro control classes Developing custom controls is one of the key ways to tame these full featured controls You ll see more exa reads information from the underlying file system automatically Chapter 7 Custom Controls byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Chapter 7 Custom Controls Overview Custom controls are a key theme in NET development They can help your programming style by improving encapsulation swap out one control and replace it with a completely different one without rewriting your form code Of course custom con modern interface Generally developers tackle custom control development for one of three reasons o To create controls that abstract away unimportant details and are tailored for a specific type of data You saw this m o To create controls that provide entirely new functionality or just combine existing Ul elements in a unique way An o To create controls with a distinct original look
58. ataGridColumnStyle class 383 GetNextControl method of Control object 74 GetNodeAt method of TreeView control 231 GetNodeCount method of TreeView control 222 GetPaintValueSupported method of UlTypeEditor class 340 Ro RR N a A A ER 4 ee E PE ASE TRA eet te en Pe TY Index byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Index H Handle property of Control class 81 of Menu class 113 Handles keyword and derived event handlers 198 HasChildren property of Control object 71 Hashtable class 300 HatchBrush class 491 492 hatched border for Panel control 431 432 HeaderStyle property of ListView control 212 help ActiveX controls for 89 application embedded support 550 559 affordances 551 553 agents 553 559 user interface integration 553 authoring tools 536 537 case for 531 532 characteristics of bad 537 538 control based and form based 542 543 creating 548 550 database based 545 546 invoking programmatically 543 550 task based 546 548 text on StatusBar 252 253 types 532 537 HTML Help 534 535 MS Help 535 536 WinHelp 532 WinHelp 533 534 HelpButton property of Form class 145 helper classes 25 HelplconProvider control 303 307 HelplconProvider vb file 321 HelpNamespace property 541 HelpNavigator enumeration 540 HelpProvider control 539 543 help without 544 545 HelpTest project 543 hiding Pane
59. best practices and programmers usually discover and rediscover that they are far more time consuming and av becomes dramatically easier with NET and how it might work for you Control Class Basics This chapter delves into the details of one of NET s most feature rich classes the Control In this chapter you learn how the control relations and handling Windows messages You also learn about some of the basic System Drawing ingredients for Classic Controls The classic controls include basic tools for input selection and display that have been used since the ancient days of 16 bit controls and the hyperlink label It rounds up with demonstrations of control validation and drag and drop techniques Forms The Form class is the basis for every application window in a NET program To use forms effectively you need to understar considers exciting new techniques like visual inheritance Windows XP styles and irregularly shaped forms It also explains Modern Controls This chapter dissects everyone s favorite Windows controls including TreeView ListView ToolBar and StatusBar As these useful higher level features or are tailored for a specific type of data Custom Controls Custom control development is one of the key themes of this book and a remarkable feature of the NET platform This cha thumbnail viewer a progress user control and a directory tree It also considers advanced topics like asynchronous control f latched onto any NET
60. bjects In other cases it s a useful way to create a repository of simple routines that can be used in a variet Understanding the different roles of classes is crucial to being able to master object oriented development When you create giving it more than one type of role The more vague a class is the more it resembles a traditional block of code from a non Classes and Types The discussion so far has reviewed object oriented development using two words classes and objects Classes are the defi design is that you can put any class to work and use it to create as many objects as you need In the NET world however these terms are a little blurred The NET class library is really built out of types and classes ar types and how they can be used If you need to refresh your memory and get reacquainted with NET s object family use th Structures Structures are like classes but are generally simpler They tend to have only a few properties and even fewer important me This means that structures act differently in comparison and assignment operations If you assign one structure variable to lt compare structures you are comparing their contents not the reference structureA structureB structureA has a copy of the contents of structureB There are two duplicate structures in memory if structureA structureB This is true as long as the structures have the same content Using full binary comparisons like
61. ble to work through this book You will probably nee issues along the way On the other hand if you have already read another more general NET book you will benefit the mo Note This book is targeted at experienced developers If you have never programmed with a language like Visual Basic C C or Java before this isn t the place to start Instead start with an introductory book on object oriented design or programming fundamentals Code Samples It s a good idea to check the online site to download the most recent up to date code samples You ll need to do this to tes often left out Instead focus on the most important conceptual sections so that you don t need to wade through needless e Introduction byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Chapter Overview The following overview describes what each chapter covers If you have some NET experience feel free to skip from chapter development it s probably easiest to read through the book sequentially to make sure you learn the basics before encounter Creating Usable Interfaces User interface design is about more than just knowing how to program the latest trendy interface element it s also about con the basics of interface design theory and the principles that support every good design Designing with Classes and Tiers For several years programming books and articles have advocated a three layered approach to application design that rigor follow these
62. ce 299 CanUndo property of TextBox control 95 Capture property of Control object 427 CardLayout manager 460 cascading windows in MDI applications 405 406 Category control property attribute 312 CenterParent StartPosition value 148 CenterScreen StartPosition value 148 Changed event 75 CharacterCasing property of TextBox control 96 charting ActiveX control 89 check boxes drawing 498 CheckBox controls 96 97 CheckBoxes property of ListView control 212 of TreeView control 228 Checked property of DateTimePicker control 108 of Menultem class 115 of TreeNode collection 229 Checkedindices property of ListView control 212 Checkedltems property of ListView control 212 CheckedListBox control 97 CheckOnClick property for list controls 98 CheckState property of CheckBox control 96 child form class in MDI application 421 422 chm file 535 Class Library project 261 263 classes 24 28 controls as 29 30 NET for user interface 29 39 roles of 24 25 and types 25 28 Clear method of Graphics object 481 of Nodes collection 225 of TextBox control 96 Click event for BitmapViewer 284 286 a A Es ie O Index byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Index D DashPattern property of pen 489 DashStyle property of pen 490 data aware controls 391 398 data binding ADO NET 360 373 advanced conversions 370 372 formatting data bef
63. certain harsh realities For example once you cre on how the Windows API is organized but they often lead to confusing inconsistencies in a framework s object moc The result of these limitations is that there are essentially two types of frameworks those that are complicated to use for sil for complex tasks like VB These object models provide a modern way to code user interfaces but many programmers wo The NET Solution NET addresses these problems by becoming more ambitious The result is a user interface framework that uses some inno some examples tasks that NET can perform but the Windows API cannot 0 Change fixed style properties like the selection type of a list box or the border type of a window 0 Change a form s owner 0 Move an MDI child window from one MDI parent window to another 0 Transform an MDI child window into an MDI parent and vice versa 0 Move controls from one window to another Clearly this list includes a couple of tricks that a self respecting application will probably never need to use Still they illustr also provides capabilities that extend it The result is a framework that works the way you would intuitively expect it to work Note The samples for this chapter include a project called ImpossibleAPI which shows one of these broken rules a child window that can jump between different MDI parents whenever the user clicks a button All of this raises an interesting question How can a programming model bu
64. class that derive not supported 0 ADO NET data objects Technically you can only directly bind to a DataColumn DataView or DataViewManager c DataView it provides Similarly when binding to a DataSet NET automatically uses the default DataViewManager 0 Your custom classes You have two options you can create custom collections that implement IList or more likely source Figure 9 1 shows the relationship between data providers and data consumers Data Providers Osta Consumers Array On ar be Any NET Control single value bindisg Arraylist 6 DataTable Dataview NET List Controls fe list binding Dataset I DataWiedianager Specialty Data Controls Custom IList e g OstaGrid Class Figure 9 1 Information flow in NET data binding Simple List Binding Binding to a list is one of the most common data binding tasks All the basic NET list controls supply a DataSource propert array and bind it to a list using the DataSource property string cityChoices Seattle New York Tokyo Montreal lstCity DataSource cityChoices The list appears with the items from the array preloaded see Figure 9 2 E Simple List Binding ae New York Tokyo Montreal Chapter 9 Data Controls byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site ADO NET Data Binding One of the most common applications of data binding is with ADO NET data objects This type of
65. control Design Time Support for Custom Controls Creating a custom control is easy but making it behave well in the design time environment often takes a little extra wizardr equip your controls for Visual Studio NET You also tackle different models of custom control licensing Data Controls Most applications need to deal with data at some point This chapter considers how you can integrate data into your user in Oe ee ae PRA MARS ASPIRE PEA ASES PEA AA ARAS WERE ee PU PA PEE eee AS EER A PA IS mee E ee Se NENNT Chapter 1 Creating Usable Interfaces byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Chapter 1 Creating Usable Interfaces Overview Sometimes it seems that no one can agree what user interface design really is Is it the painstaking process an artist goes t usability lab subjecting users to a complicated new application Is it the series of decisions that determine how to model infe In fact user interface design is really a collection of several different tasks 0 User interface modeling This is the process where you look at the tasks a program needs to accomplish and de to combine instinct convention a dash of psychology and painstaking usability testing 0 User interface architecture This is the logical design you use to divide the functionality in your application into se portions of the user interface framework 0 User interface coding This is the process where you write the code for mana
66. d for PrintPreview control 418 RefreshProperties control property attribute 313 RefreshText method of MDI child window 404 RegEx object 141 RegexTypeEditor 338 Region object filling 483 Region property of controls 520 525 of form 186 registration of ActiveX controls 89 RegistryForm class 151 regular expressions RegexTypeEditor for 338 validation with 140 142 relative based navigation of TreeView control 222 Remove method for controls 32 of Nodes collection 225 RemoveAll method of ToolTipProvider control 86 RemovedOwnedForm method of Form class 162 RemoveHdc method of Graphics object 481 rendering mode 475 477 rendering quality for GDI drawing 481 RenderTransparent property of Label control 91 repainting window 467 469 when debugging 480 e a a a PT AAN A RR SOs un un ee mmm iY Index byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Index S Save method in MDI interface 415 Save method of Graphics object 482 SaveFileDialog 169 SaveSize method of RegistryForm class 151 Screen class 149 screen resolution and form size 171 172 and window location decisions 149 scroll button drawing 499 scrollable forms 152 154 thumbnail viewer for bitmaps as 276 283 ScrollableControl class dock padding 178 Form class inheritance from 152 153 ScrollChange property of MonthCalendar control 110 ScrollPixelAmount property f
67. ding your own dockable windows Chapter 11 Dynamic User Interface byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Chapter 11 Dynamic User Interface Overview One of the most common questions in any Windows programming language is how to programmatically add a control to a fo especially if the programmer needs to add a licensed ActiveX control or handle the events of the newly created control NET erases the distinction between design time and runtime control programming In NET programming every control is ct editor Visual Studio NET generates the appropriate code and adds it to a collapsed region of your Form class By studying Of course creating a dynamic user interface is about much more than defining a control class at runtime It s also a philosog database records user preferences or localization needs This chapter examines some innovative techniques you can use drawing tools document applications and the question of localization It even considers how you can create a custom form Chapter 11 Dynamic User Interface byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site The Case for Dynamic User Interface One theme you see in this chapter is the recurring question how dynamic should a dynamic user interface be You ll see ex dynamically from scratch So which approach is best As usual it all depends on your project and design goals To determine where dynamic user interface fits in
68. dio recorder In reality when a user complains that an interface is confusing it s rarely because it lacks a few quick shortcut controls or ti Adding more buttons to the audio recorder doesn t just make the interface look ugly it also makes it seem impossibly comp Segmenting Information Deciding how to divide a product s functionality into separate applications windows and controls is the most important user similar management windows For example a database application might have an add remove configure window for configu that steps through multiple steps leading to a single goal Before beginning an application you should identify the most obvi Some other principles are outlined here D Use the common Windows analogies These are obvious metaphors for example document icons represent files 0 Don t let metaphors take over your program For example you shouldn t find a cute way to reuse a metaphor when trash can to delete files and eject floppy disks D Use the right controls to offload the work Controls like the TreeView ListView and DataGrid can handle the basic u 0 Hide unnecessary information 0 Appearing complex is being complex A program appears logical when it does what the user expects Keep this in r Inductive User Interface Microsoft has a new methodology designed to make user interfaces simpler by breaking features into individual self explana incorporates a set of tasks related to a single type of information This ty
69. disorganized swamped by layers of button classes that have little to do The View Mediator Pattern The approach that NET encourages circumvents this problem by using events When you create a form in Visual Studio NI handling logic is inserted as a series of special methods which are added to the custom form class In other words every form acts as a giant switchboard for all the controls it contains This type of design pattern which is so View Mediator pattern It dictates that one central class organizes each individual window Here s the same text box example you saw earlier rewritten as form level event handler The event handler is hooked up int InitializeComponent method public class MainForm System Windows Forms Form System Windows Forms TextBox txtUserName public MainForm Chapter 2 Designing with Classes and Tiers byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Encapsulation Encapsulation is the principle that suggests objects should have separate carefully outlined responsibilities Everything they automatically where possible Encapsulation is often identified as a pillar of object oriented programming but it has played performs a discrete well identified task independently and has a much better chance of being reused in another application The best way to start separating your user interface code is to think more consciously about encapsulation The custom for presents
70. e Introduction The NET revolution is in full swing and the confusion that has surrounded it for the last year is finally lifting Developers are development cross language interoperability painless deployment or a new way to access data Instead we now realize tl miniature revolutions into one marketing term along with a class library stocked with hundreds of pieces of prebuilt function Unfortunately you can t come to terms with the amazing breadth of the NET Framework by reading a single book To becon interest you the most In other words it s time to forget about the broadly sweeping goals of NET for a moment and focus o This book explains how to program user interfaces applying the tools and techniques of the NET world You may already be interfaces and the standard Windows controls and conventions Other features are entirely new and will be unlike anything all works through the NET class library which provides a new set of capabilities subtleties and quirks that every NET proc About This Book User interface design deals with several aspects of programming The tendency in a book about a topic like this is to pursue reference that only explains controls and commands is dangerous and without a proper discussion of best practices and de enhance debug or scale up For that reason I ve made the decision in this book to focus on three distinct themes What This Book Teaches You This book fills three roles It pro
71. e Some of tr Using attributes to classify and describe properties and other aspects of your control Adding your control to the toolbox with an icon Using prebuilt UlTypeEditor classes that allow directory names collections and other property types to be edited a Creating your own UlTypeEditor classes that allow your control to be configured with custom dialog windows Using control designers to filter out unused properties add designer wizards and other tricks Licensing your controls oo oo This chapter will explore these topics and use them to revise some of the examples introduced in the previous chapter Chapter 8 Design Time Support for Custom Controls byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Prev Control Designer Basics Adding a basic level of design time support to your controls is easy In this section you learn how you can outfit your control Attributes Designer attributes are the first line in custom control support They instruct the IDE how to treat various parts of your control syntax or use some sort of visual tool With attributes the information that describes your control can be easily created an The previous chapter developed a Progress user control that displayed a synchronized label paired with a progress bar To r Properties Status ProgressBarUserControl Progress als AutoScrol False AutoScrofMarain 0 0 El AutoScrolMinSize 0 0 Dock None E DockPadding Location 4
72. ell suited to a dedicated document view architecture D When you are using complex documents D When you are providing more than one view of the same document o When you want the flexibility to provide different views in separate windows or in a single window When discussing MDI interfaces a document is the actual underlying data For example with Microsoft Word the documen example the view in Microsoft Word might just include the page that is currently being edited which can be scrolled to diffe A typical document view application uses the following ingredients O A document class O A document view class that references an instance of a document O An MDI child class that hosts the view O An MDI container that holds all the MDI children Why would a document require more than one view It s easy to think of a view as a window onto a different part of a docum editing view where changes are made and a print preview that shows the final layout Both views represent the same data in Similarly you might have a document object that corresponds to a large amount of information from a database You could s example is an HTML file which can be viewed as straight text or marked up content A Document View Ordering Program Our next example presents a fairly sophisticated model that supports real time previews using the document view architectu D An Order document object that contains a list of Orderltem objects 0 Two view objects OrderPrintPr
73. en referred to as WinHelp 95 took over WinHelp 95 files are familia WinHelp 95 was a major improvement in the Help world Whereas the original WinHelp forced developers to create their ow define the standardized multilevel table of contents WinHelp 95 really has two parts the cnt contents page which also pro When a user double clicks a topic the table of contents disappears and is replaced with the appropriate help window CA Contents Inden Fro Chek atopic and then chek Display On cick ancien tah such a Innere 27 What ie WinRAR A WirRAR Imkations 2 Console RAR version A Acknowedenems gt Quick stait lor novices D Archwe Iyoes and parameters WrRAR nerlace 2 Integrabon vath Windows shel e Command ine made Chapter 14 Help and Application Embedded Support byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site aay CEE Classic Bad Help Have you ever had this experience You find an unusual option buried deep in an application and it piques your curiosity Y the description provided by the context sensitive Help system To enable option X click once on the option X check box Ti changes Clearly something is missing here You want to know what option X does the Help wants to explain in oddly explicit detail the way to use a check box is an instinctive part of every computer user s understanding If you don t know how to use a che This is a classic example of bad help Some of the cha
74. er Interface byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Prev ara Dynamic Content When discussing dynamic interfaces it s useful to draw a distinction between those that generate controls dynamically like can appear in just about any situation but it s most common in these cases D Applications that need to be localized or configured for different sets of users 0 Data driven applications like product catalogs that use interfaces designed to closely model the organization of a d One simple example of dynamic content is the average About box shown in Figure 11 7 lt rarely makes sense to hard cod guaranteed to remain correct and it can be extremely tedious to synchronize if you use autoincrementing version numbers lblProductName Text Application ProductName lblProductVersion Text Version Application ProductVersion ToString lblPath Text Executing in Application ExecutablePath E Generic About Box DrawingSquares Version 1 0 779 31083 Executing In C Temp DrawingSquares exe Figure 11 7 Dynamic content in the About box Localization The NET platform provides considerable support for localizing Windows Forms through resource files Using resource files to be translated into different languages are embedded in a separate satellite assembly You can create different localized The basic process for creating a localizable form is simple 1 Set the Localizable p
75. erriding methods to prevent 383 384 Editor attribute 338 EditValue method of UlTypeEditor class 340 ellipse drawing 523 524 filling 483 email address validating with regular expression 140 141 enabled controls 409 Enabled property of Control object 74 of LinkLabel Link object 94 of Menultem class 115 of ToolBarButton object 245 encapsulation 44 46 custom control decisions 275 data binding 387 390 EndCap property of pen 489 EndUpdate method of ListView control 219 220 EnsureVisible method of ListView control 213 of TreeNode collection 231 enumerations 44 AnchorStyles 174 comparison of database integers with 370 custom 335 336 FormStartPosition 148 149 HelpNavigator 540 ShapeType 520 State for buttons 513 Enum Parse method 67 68 error checking See also 336 error messages user response to 17 18 ErrorProvider control 298 validation with 138 140 event handler for controls 40 41 overriding in inherited form 197 198 events for custom controls filtering 327 329 Form class 146 147 exception classes 276 Expand method of TreeNode collection 230 ExpandAll method of TreeNode collection 230 expanding TreeView levels 230 231 extender providers control layout engines as 463 se Es a UI ana Index byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Index F FAR 537 feedback for user 19 ProgressBar
76. et breakpoints and use other debuc control is running live This limitation can hamper your testing to a certain extent Developing good design time support for your control requires a the IDE itself To accomplish this add your control to the toolbox and then configure your custom control project to start Vi custom designer code that are triggered as the control is manipulated in the IDE Mirectery ree Property Pages T Dar el wegen nett Views 240 ME oer DO en ond ari uE Sist Colors Corn re ames Mono wer f hen naje f Oates wm db O parra cate CAI Figure 8 8 Debugging design time support Testing for Design Mode You may also notice some quirky design time behavior that doesn t occur if the control is added programmatically For exarr At first it seems straightforward enough once you set the Drive property the corresponding directory tree appears You can Tormics Design u e M DirectoryTree Example E Acokotiors ASP NET E Cectook Docurents and Settings a Extras Chapter 8 Design Time Support for Custom Controls byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Custom Designers One of the problems with traditional ActiveX control development is that details about a control s design time behavior are mi A control designer provides the design time behavior for a control The NET framework provides a basic control designer in System Object
77. eview and OrderGridView Both derive from the UserControl class but they could be 0 A Child form class which can display either of the two view objects 0 A main Parent class which provides a toolbar and the event handling logic that creates the document objects and c 0 Resource classes like Product which represents an individual product and PriceList which provides a static Getlte Figure 10 7 shows the relationship of some of the classes in this example Document View Form Order OrderGridView Child OrderTten J Figure 10 7 The document view architecture in the ordering program Document class The heart of this application is the document class called Order which represents a collection of items in a sales order Bec class which represents an item in the catalog Chapter 10 MDI Interfaces and Workspaces byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site uy CED Floating Windows and Docking Everyone expects an MDI interface to sport dockable windows and toolbars floating controls that can be latched into place o awkward Windows and previous application frameworks do not provide native support for most of these features Instead floating windows never look exactly the same in any two Windows applications even if those two applications are both writte Floating Toolbars By default when you create a toolbar it is automatically docked to the top of the form However it doesn t need to be as witl
78. f microwave users had to navigate through a series of menus that gave options about the pitch of the food re would suddenly become much more intimidating Even more practical enhancements like allowing the user to fine tune pow added complexity Heavily customizable applications also bury genuinely useful options in a slew of miscellaneous less important properties F of an application as you add extraneous elements Most options can either be eliminated and handled by a reasonable defat every time you give a user an option you are forcing the user to make a decision Many users become increasingly unsettle Restricting the User s Imagination If you ve ever worked at a Help desk you probably understand that the human mind thinks in terms of cause and effect The for mysterious problems or unexpected behavior with their applications even if these explanations seem wildly fantastical to When designing a program you need to restrict this natural tendency Some ways you can do this include 0 Give feedback for long tasks Some possibilities include a continuously updating dialog box message progress bar 0 Show don t tell The average user generally views long winded dialog boxes that explain what will happen next with just direct the user to an important area of the screen For example many drawing programs now use thumbnail pr O Avoid the super intelligent interface People love to see the demon in the machine Even in a painstakingly designec con
79. fect in fairly complex computer games like the popular hit The Sir 0 Stationary embedded This is the most common form of embedded help and it refers to the content added to dial D Agents This is one of the most advanced and time consuming types of embedded help It was pioneered largely by schizophrenic it provides tools aimed to make it easy for all developers to use this level of support but it only occas 0 Bidirectional help To some this is a holy grail of embedded help but it s rarely achieved and usually only in a pr in two ways Not only does the user have to leave the application to read most Help files but once the appropriate ir file to act on the user s behalf and actually show the user how to do what is needed Some Help files do provide ruc communication is difficult and fragile With bidirectional help Help can perform the necessary task once it determin Affordances Affordances are the visual clues designed to demystify a complex application For example Windows uses brief descriptio Internet Properties Genera Secwiy Privacy Contert Connectons Programs Advanced S oitinge Move the sides io selact a prvacy ceting for the Intemnet tona Medium Blocks thackparly cookies thet do not have e compact privacy policy Blocks thrd parly cookies that use personaly identifiable information without your molict consent Restniets first party cookies that use personaly idertifiable information without imp
80. forms creating them displaying them and handling their interacti developments hint at two of the themes take up in the rest of the book Shaped forms give just a taste of what you encount control designs you explore with control inheritance throughout this book Both techniques represent the step from ordinary tu Chapter 6 Modern Controls byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 D Companion Web Site Chapter 6 Modern Controls Many of the controls you ve looked at so far like buttons menus and text boxes have been around since the early days of organizing complex information At the same time the ToolBar and StatusBar revamped the look of the standard Windows a In this chapter you learn about all these controls More important you learn the tricks and techniques you need to master tl synchronize themselves with other controls The ImageList The ImageList is a special type of collection that holds images of a preset size and color depth Other controls access pictur Note In some respects the ImageList isn t really a control It doesn t have a graphical representation and the end user never interacts with it directly On the other hand ImageList objects are usually created and configured at design time when you are building the user interface They are also closely linked to other modern controls like ListView TreeView and ToolBar controls To create an ImageList at design time drag it onto your form it will appear in t
81. found users of all levels Don t assume vour application can determine what the user intends to do Automatic fi Chapter 1 Creating Usable Interfaces byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Programming User Interface for the Web NET provides web controls that resemble their common Windows counterparts even maintaining their state automatically a sometimes be transferred from one environment to the other With new features like disconnected data access you can eve There are still some restrictions inherent to the world of HTML Most significant HTML is not a windowing system There s n Because of these limitations it s extremely difficult to create some application types that are easy for desktop applications developers will start to create custom NET menu controls that can render themselves as client side DHTML but for now yot The part of the NET framework that allows you to create web applications is ASP NET ASP NET elegantly solves some lor react to an ASP NET control event you need to trigger a postback which sends the page back to the server This takes a s changes and impossible to use capture events like mouse movements or key presses For reasons like this you can t perfc all the information is entered and the page is submitted ASP NET also introduces data binding as a key technique It works considerations Finally you should also be aware that there is little standardization in the Internet world M
82. fr look Ugly and confusing interfaces on the other hand lead to a legacy of headaches for developers and end users In programming circles user interfaces are often the subject of heated debate Some developers resent the whole topic of us requirements the hard to please end users and the perception that they have to simplify the product of their perfectly natur fad They aim to discover the newest and most avant garde user interface controls before they have been adopted as standa Ultimately both approaches are bad news for end users who just want a simple unobtrusive interface that works exactly the the unwritten rules of user interface design Tip Chapter 1 Creating Usable Interfaces byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site A Brief History of User Interfaces You might think that user interface design is a history of continuous innovation In fact user interface design is actually mart some unpredictable time a lone programmer or innovative programming team creates a truly new user interface model that incompatible versions This process of false imitation continues until the next revolution So what are these eras of user interface development It all began very simply The Command Line Era Almost everyone who has any experience with computers has at least glimpsed the fabled command line Today s novice us from most people Even advanced computer users are sometimes bound by the superstition that
83. ful to create a wiz o Use form functionality in several different windows This allows you to create a framework that you might use for diffe some of the same buttons to close the window or open a file And as with any type of inheritance visual inheritance gives you many different ways to customize how the descendent cla To create a simple example of form inheritance you might create a wizard form like the one shown in Figure 5 30 It uses a bottom In this example found in the code for this chapter under the project name Visuallnheritance the base form is name Eak a Ancestor Header Text Companion Web Figure 5 30 An ancestor form for a wizard To create an inherited form that uses this form you first need to compile the project unless the form is already stored in a s choose Add Inherited Form You ll be prompted to choose a new form name and select the form you want to derive from s Inheritance Picker Speaty the comconert to inhert frome Component Name Namespace Veualinhertance waaier anwe lt New component name Form Figure 5 31 Inheriting from a form Of cairee vou don t actuallv need to iee the wizard to create an inherited form All voi really need ta do ie create a Form e Laien D Matthew r iep gt Browse Chapter 5 Forms byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site ELL ar The Last Word In this chapter you ve traveled from the basics of Windows
84. ging the user interface with the appr model and architecture before you begin this stage This book concentrates on the third and most time consuming step where user interfaces designs are translated into code design and discussion about user interface architecture the second item on the list recurs throughout this book and is the This chapter however focuses on the first task user interface design Here you ll examine the essential guidelines that no p entering into the mind of that often feared final judge the end user You could skip ahead at this point and dive right into NET code However the greatest programming framework in the worlc less important than learning how to work with it in code Chapter 1 Creating Usable Interfaces byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site ED CEE Why Worry About the Interface User interface is the thin outer shell that wraps a program s logic and provides a way for ordinary users to interact with it Us 0 Interpreting what a user wants and translating it into the corresponding operations o Retrieving information and displaying it in different ways O0 Guiding users through a task and steering them away from common mistakes User interfaces bear the weight of a program because they are the only part the user interacts with It doesn t matter what y pianist in a small dark prison cell As with anything else people judge and identify programs based on what they can see
85. hapter 12 GDI Basics Overview NET provides a new framework of classes for two dimensional drawing and rendering Taken together these classes founc GDI Technically GDI still relies on the same low level Windows APIs you may have used in Windows programming of the past functions was that the programmer could write text and images to different devices printers monitors and video cards witt and made use of any optimizations that the hardware might provide Unfortunately the GDI functions required a lot of coding The GDI types in NET are object oriented wrappers over the low level GDI functions and strictly speaking they don t add a support for geometric transformations antialiasing and palette blending Many of these techniques required a painful amour You ve already seen GDI at work throughout this book In fact a number of the more advanced examples would have been o In Chapter 3 you saw many of the basic GDI ingredients in the System Drawing namespace including objects rer o In Chapter 4 you saw an owner drawn menu that created menu entries using text and a thumbnail icon o In Chapter 5 you saw irregularly shaped forms that construct and outline their borders with a graphics path o In Chapter 6 you saw how ImageList images could be drawn on a form s surface o In Chapter 9 you saw a custom DataGrid column that draws text content and an icon This chapter explains the underlying GDI framework that makes all th
86. hat maps individual controls to specific data fields A simple helper function in a dat public class DBHelper public static void FillForm Form formToBind DataTable mappings DataRow rowMatch foreach Control ctrl in formToBind Controls See if this menu item has a corresponding row rowMatch mappings Select ControlName ctrl Text 1f it does configure the binding accordingly if rowMatch GetLength 0 gt 0 We use offset 0 because there can only be one match string fieldToUse rowMatch 0 DataField We assume the text property is the one to be filled Alternatively we could add a database field with this information ctrl Text dt Rows fieldToUse This technique works well because it establishes an extra layer of indirection between the database and the controls It s ea user interface is quite generic Of course you need to manually call this method every time the user moves to a new row to Note Variations on this theme are examined in Chapter 14 which shows you how to use a database to roll your own context sensitive Help Another way to help separate vour database from vour user interface code is by keeping database specific content like field Chapter 9 Data Controls byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Data Aware Controls Not all controls work well with data binding For example the popular TreeView and ListView c
87. he LicFileLicenseProvider class This class you look at next The LicFileLicenseProvider searches for a text file in the same directory as the control assembly This LIC file uses the cont Directory TreeControl DirectoryTree LIC Inside this file is a simple predefined text string in the format Component is a licer Thus the contents of the Directory TreeControl DirectoryTree LIC file would be DirectoryTreeControl DirectoryTree is a licensed component This file must be placed in the client project s bin directory where Visual Studio NET compiles the final exe just prior to lau Note It s worth noting that these LIC files don t need to be distributed with a client application When you compile a Windows program a license licx file is created with all the licensing information for all license controls This file is compiled as a binary resource and embedded in the final client assembly However if another developer wants to create a client application with your control a LIC source file is needed To enforce LIC file licensing you need to add a LicenseProvider attribute to your control class that tells NET to use the LicF LicenseProvider typeof LicFileLicenseProvider public class DirectoryTree TreeView Additionally you need to create the license when the control is created using the static Validate method of the LicenseMe private License license public DirectoryTree license LicenseManager Validate t
88. he button should only include the image Thus the control needs to use hit testing when a O The button can appear in several states including disabled selected when the mouse is positioned above the imag 0 The button must be able to deal with any valid image size The first step is to create a control class that provides a member variable to track its current state In our example a State public class HotTrackButton Control public enum State Normal MouseOver Pushed private State state State Normal Chapter 13 GDI Controls byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Reconsidering the Vector Drawing Program Chapter 11 developed the basic framework for a control based drawing program using the label control The program workec that the NET Framework doesn t include controls for common shapes like circles triangles and squares Instead the progr Now that you ve covered GDI there s a far better solution available and it only takes a little bit more coding The basic con place of the bordered label The drawing framework handles the dragging resizing and coloring automatically by setting pro There is a possible problem If the user draws a circle you want the circle shape to act like a circle for all mouse operations to move the control Similarly this invisible portion of the control shouldn t overwrite other controls on the drawing surface Figure 13 5 shows a drawing program wi
89. he calculations and processing specific to the individual business are carried O An underlying data layer which shuttles information back and forth from the database to the business objects An object in one tier can only interact with the adjacent tiers as shown in Figure 2 6 Presentation Tier Window Window nd I I UT Code UI Code UT Code Business Tier Business Object Business Object Data Tier Data Services Object Optional Data Services Object Optional J Database Binary Files Message Queue XML Files Figure 2 6 Three tier design Almost everyone agrees that this sort of structure is the best way to organize an application but it s not always easy to imp complicated and sometimes make assumptions or have expectations about the way they will receive information The resul Problems with Three Tier Design Before you can solve the problems of three tier design you have to understand what these problems are The problems alth The presentation tier Though it doesn t explicitly state it three tier design really requires a fair degree of consistency among user interface contro change like substituting a ListView control for a DataGrid requires a totally different access model DataGrids are filled excl other ListView columns you have to add a collection of fields to each individual item These quirks are easy enough to mas that can quickly and efficiently fill co
90. he component tray The basic properties for t Table 6 1 ImageList Members Member ColorDepth Images ImageSize TransparentColor Draw Tip Transparent regions are a must when mixing custom images and standard controls If you simply use an icon with a grey background your interface becomes garish and ugly on a computer where the default color scheme is not used as a grey box appears around the image You also run into problems if the icon can be selected at which point it is highlighted with a blue background You can add remove and rearrange images using the ListView designer Just click the ellipsis next to the Images prop Figure 6 1 Image Collection Editor Members System Drawing Bitmap Properties Chapter 6 Modern Controls byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site ListView and TreeView The ListView and TreeView are probably the most widespread and distinctive controls in modern application design As far combine different types of functionality and information Thanks to Windows Explorer they are also widely recognized and u These days it s hard to find programs that don t use TreeView and ListView The Windows operating system makes heavy L snap in model follows suit like SQL Server and even configuration utilities for the NET platform see Figure 6 3 NLT Tramework Configuration D a Ye ie nl ne ine CTET Sp wrench Carte Bere star 3000 0 om CR
91. here is a possible error O0 Users might enter several pieces of invalid data at the same time If you don t check the data until the form is submi O By the time users submit a form they might have already forgotten about the particular field they entered incorrectly Validation solves this information by checking the field as soon as the user is finished entering it and changes focus to anot In the past developers have tried to create do it yourself validation by responding to a control s LostFocus event The prob each other trying to move the focus somewhere else NET handles this problem with the Validating and Validated events These events occur after the user has chosen to move 1 Leave 2 Validating 3 Validated 4 LostFocus The Validated event allows you to respond to correctly entered data The Validating event is more useful It allows you to ve Validation only takes place if the source control the control to be validated has the CausesValidaton property set to true Ir Table 4 15 NET Validation Source Control CausesValidation is false CausesValidation is true CausesValidation is true a A Validation Example The program shown in Figure 4 20 uses validation to verify that neither text box is left blank If the user tries to change focus M SimpleValidation First Name Last Name Chapter 4 Classic Controls byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site ED a
92. hing Help manually and using the cont D When to design your own Help and how you can weave it into an application using an extensible database based or 0 How to break down the limits of Help and design application embedded support user assistance that s integrated in some basic approaches like affordances and wizards through visual inheritance and a few advanced techniques lil Chapter 14 Help and Application Embedded Support byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site acy ar The Case for Help In recent years there has been a shift away from printed documentation The occasional weighty manual like the book you re business software no longer assumes the user is willing to perform any additional reading Instead these programs are hear occasional user question Online Help doesn t have to take the form of a second rate user manual however The advantages of online Help are remarke 0 Increased control With a little effort you can determine exactly what information users see when they click the F a third party For Dummies guide and you have no way of knowing what they will find D Rich media With online Help you can use as many pictures as you want in any combination and even include so 0 Search tools and context sensitivity Help systems can automate most of the drudgery associated with finding in index and programs can use context sensitivity to make sure users see the appropriate topic immedia
93. his GetType this The Validate method throws a LicenseException if it doesn t find the correct string in the LIC file and refuses to create you Finally you need to dispose of the license when the control is disposed protected override void Dispose bool disposing if license null Chapter 8 Design Time Support for Custom Controls byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site ez Next The Last Word This chapter covered a lot of ground with custom controls The story doesn t end here however In the coming chapters you everything from data access to rich graphics In all these cases knowing how to match custom controls with an appropriate components it s indispensable To see what other developers are creating you can take your search online and begin working with the latest user interface critique your code creations but just might provide a link from this book s web site http www prosetech com if there s en Chapter 9 Data Controls byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Chapter 9 Data Controls Overview It s often remarked that a large percentage of Windows applications are little more than attractive window dressings over a re responsibility of this type of software is to allow highly structured data entry and provide reportgenerating modules that sumr concentrated in the user interface tier Of course databases aren t only used f
94. his value as an integer representing a hexa decimal value using the ColorTransla A Win32 color code You specify this value as an integer representing a hexadecimal value using the ColorTransla oo Do oO The code listing that follows shows several ways to specify a color using the Color ColorTranslator and SystemColors type Create a color from an ARGB value int alpha 255 red 0 int green 255 blue 0 ctrl ForeColor Color FromARGB alpha red green blue Create a color from an environment setting ctrl ForeColor SystemColors HighlightText Create a color using a NET name ctrl ForeColor Color Crimson Create a color from an HTML code ctrl ForeColor ColorTranslator FromHtml Blue Create a color from an OLE color code ctrl ForeColor ColorTranslator FromOle OxFFOO Create a color from a Win32 color code ctrl ForeColor ColorTranslator FromWin32 0xA000 The next code snippet shows how you can transform the KnownColors enumeration into an array of strings that represent cc String colorNames colorNames System Enum GetNames typeof KnownColor Changing a color name string back to the appropriate enumerated value is just as easy using the special static Enum Parse chooses the matching one Chapter 3 Control Class Basics byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Fonts and Text The Control object defines a Text property
95. hods be Most of the methods in Table 12 2 are self explanatory Two interesting methods that haven t described yet include DrawP Table 12 2 Graphics Class Methods for Drawing Chapter 12 GDI Basics byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site E CEE Hit Testing In Chapter 11 you saw how you could build a simple drawing application by dynamically adding controls An alternative anc curves and other shapes have no ability to capture mouse actions and raise the typical MouseDown and Click events Inste determine if a shape was clicked This process is known as hit testing NET provides basic hit testing support through a Contains method that s built into the Rectangle structure It examines a s Rectangle However there are a couple of quirks that take some getting used to with Rectangle hit testing D A Rectangle is a combination of points defined by a top left corner width and height It doesn t necessarily corres the Rectangle with one of the GDI drawing methods o The Rectangle is the only structure that supports hit testing That means that if you create another shape like a reg or retain the original Rectangle for later use The next example uses hit testing with the square drawing program developed earlier When the user right clicks the form t the clicked point see Figure 12 17 Reacts to the Form MouseDown event private void DrawSquare_MouseDown object sender System Windows For
96. ic a printed dc Perform usability tests When writing a program you design based on who you believe the audience is At some po Index byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Index Symbols amp ampersand to configure shortcut keys 71 Index byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Index A Abort method of DataGridColumnStyle class 383 About box 449 450 AcceptButton for form 146 AcceptsReturn property of TextBox control 95 AcceptsTab property of TextBox control 95 access keys for controls 71 Action property of TreeViewEventArgs object 227 Activate method of form 403 Activated event of Form class 146 Activation property of ListView control 211 Active property of ToolTipProvider control 86 ActiveControl property of ContainerControl class 154 ActiveLinkColor property of LinkLabel control 93 ActiveMdiChild property of MDI container 402 ActiveX controls 259 imported 89 90 MSFlexGrid 458 Add method of Nodes collection 225 Add Reference dialog box 262 AddArc method of GraphicsPath object 484 AddBezier method of GraphicsPath object 484 AddBeziers method of GraphicsPath object 484 AddClosedCurve method of GraphicsPath object 484 AddCurve method of GraphicsPath object 484 AddEllipse method of GraphicsPath object 484 AddLine method of GraphicsPath object 484 AddLines method of GraphicsPath object 484 AddOwnedForm method of F
97. iderations Users with more available space expect example Figure 5 11 are irredeemably frustrating E insufficient Space DEK a MIDI only project you don t need to use bun files wrk files contain all the necessary project settings and MIDI data ir this casc Explanation of DirectShow Audio Options Information on several new audio options in the DirectShow Audio dialog Options Andio was left out of the User Cuide and online Helo Below is an explanation of cach new osion Figure 5 11 A frustrating window Tip Generally a form needs to be resizable as soon as it stores more content than it can show at once For example a configuration window with a few settings does not need to be resizable because all the information is available On the other hand a window that shows a scrolled text view or a data grid can benefit from more space and so should be resizable Ever since the dawn of Windows 95 and 32 bit programming developers have found it increasingly difficult to avoid writing m The emphasis on MDI interfaces has also contributed to this change In an MDI Multiple Document Interface application u One common solution is to write procedures that dynamically resize the window by responding to a resize event or messag and ugly It s also hard to alter or debug when the form changes even slightly and a nightmarish example of hard coded vall Minimum and Maximum Size Chapter 5 Forms byMatthew MacDonald
98. ilt on the Windows API actually perform feats the the Windows API with a fair bit of effort For example you could appear to change the border style of a window by destroyin information from the previous window In fact this is more or less what takes place in NET If you examine the control or window handle the numeric value that id operations This signifies that on an operating system level NET actually provides you with a new window or control The c it s hardly an illusion at all any more than the illusion that NET web controls can maintain state or that television shows co Chapter 3 Control Class Basics byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site The Control Class Chapter 2 introduced NET control classes and examined their place in the overall architecture of an application To summa o You create and manipulate controls and forms using NET classes The Common Language Runtime recognizes th O You use a control from the NET class library by creating an instance of the appropriate class and adding it to the o You configure controls by setting properties In addition you can react to control events in two ways by creating an Every NET control derives from the base class System Windows Forms Control Depending on the complexity of the contre Syoten coject U system marsta ralbytefcbject LEGEND Concrete class Bestzact class Systen Windows Forms LEStViewl len
99. ing Text Install InstalledFontCollection fonts new InstalledFontCollection foreach FontFamily family in fonts Families lstAvailableFonts Add family Name The online samples for this chapter include a FontViewer utility that uses this technique to create a list of fonts The user ca window see Figure 3 5 To perform the font painting the application uses some of the GDI methods you ll see in Chapter Font Viewer 324 Comic Sans MS Figure 3 5 A simple font viewer Note Note that the Font property does not always configure the appearance of the text in the control For example the font of all windows is defined by the system and is unchangeable Instead the Form Font property defines the default font for all contained controls Access Keys Some controls namely buttons and menu items allow a character in their caption to be highlighted and used as an access Ctrl key and that character the button is clicked automatically To configure these shortcuts keys just add an ampersand ammnarcanr vanl naar tn inclina tha tavt 2a Chapter 3 Control Class Basics byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 O Companion Web Site Control Relations Table 3 2 Table 3 2 Members for Control Relationships Member HasChildren Controls Parent TopLevelControl and FindForm Contains GetChildAtPoint ContextMenu and Menu Chapter 3 Control Class Basics User intertaces in Ce byMatthe
100. is possible Chapter 12 GDI Basics User Interfaces in Ce byMatthew MacDonald Windows Forres sn Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Paint Sessions with GDI The heart of GDI programming is the System Drawing Graphics class The Graphics class encapsulates a GDI drawing s combination of the Graphics class methods Accessing the Graphics Object There are essentially two ways to access a live instance of the Graphics class In many of the examples you ve looked at so object is provided as a parameter to an event handler For example the code that follows draws a curve onto a form using the Graphics DrawArc method see Figure 12 1 This code handles the Form Paint event private void forml_Paint object sender System Windows Forms PaintEventArgs e Pen drawingPen new Pen Color Red 15 e Graphics DrawArc DrawingPen 50 20 100 200 40 210 Figure 12 1 Painting to a GDI surface You could perform the same task by overriding the OnPaint method which is the best approach for an owner drawn control This code overrides the base Form OnPaint method protected override void OnPaint System Windows Forms PaintEventArgs e Chapter 12 GDI Basics User intertaces in Ce byMatthew MacDonald Windows Ferres sn Apress 2002 Companion Web SOmMmpanioh Wee Site Optimizing GDI Painting Painting is a performance sensitive area for any application Slow rendering
101. item at the supplied index if index gt Count 1 index lt 0 throw new System IndexOutOfRangel this List RemoveAt index Exception Chapter 13 GDI Controls byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site CD EE The Last Word GDI controls represent the fusion of two remarkable new features the nextgeneration drawing framework GDI and NET s limitless and major tool vendors have already begun developing NET equivalents for common Ul widgets like advanced scrc cost If you want to master control development the best approach is to review as many code examples as possible There s no require as much sheer code as a basic sales ordering database application Microsoft on its MSDN home page provides se The next chapter shifts the focus to a new topic integrating Help into your NET applications and creating intelligent interfac Chapter 14 Help and Application Embedded Support byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site LD a Chapter 14 Help and Application Embedded Support Overview Help Is it the final polish on a professional application or a time consuming chore It all depends on the audience but most confused or disoriented Without this basic aid you or your organization s technical support department are sure to be buri In this chapter you learn D How to integrate Windows Help files into your applications You look at launc
102. its node Nodes Add Apple node Nodes Add Peach node treeFood Nodes Add Vegetables node Nodes Add Tomato Chapter 6 Modern Controls byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 O Companion Web Site Advanced TreeView Tricks The TreeView is a sophisticated control and it provides a great deal of customization possibilities Some of the additional ap Table 6 7 TreeView Appearance Properties Property Description CheckBoxes Set this to true to display a check FullRowSelect When set to true selecting a node HotTracking When set to true the text in a nod Indent Specifies the left to right distance ShowLines ShowPlusMinus and ShowRootLines Boolean properties that configure expand a node and the root lines Sorted When set to true nodes are sortec sort order other than to add the nc The TreeNode also provides some useful properties that haven t been discussed yet Table 6 8 Mainly these properties allc and foreground color and determine its relatives as you saw earlier Table 6 8 TreeNode State Properties Property Description Checked True if you are using a TreeView with check b IsEditing True if the user is currently editing this node s IsExpanded True if this node is expanded meaning its chi IsSelected True if this is the currently selected node Onl TreeView SelectedNode property IsVisible True if the node is currently visible A node is programmatically show a node u
103. king Help Programmatically The examples so far require the user to press the F1 key This automated approach doesn t work as well if you want to provi reminder can reassure the user that help is nearby To trigger help programmatically you need to use the static ShowHelp method of the Help class found in the System Winc uses the Help class behind the scenes when the user presses F1 There are several overloaded versions of the ShowHelp method The simplest requires a help filename or URL and the co operating system reasons Here s an example that shows the test hlp file Help ShowHelp this test hlp Additionally you can use a version of the ShowHelp method that requires a HelpNavigator one that requires a keyword or context sensitive help Help ShowHelp this test hlp HelpNavigator Topic about htm To save yourself some work when using this technique with the HelpProvider you would probably retrieve these values from private void cmdHelp_Click object sender System EventArgs e Help ShowHelp this hlp HelpNamespace hlp GetHelpNavigator this hlp GetHelpKeyword this Similarly you might use a right click context menu for a control that provides the control s default help private void mnuHelp_Click object sender System EventArgs e Control ctrl mnulabel SourceControl Help ShowHelp ctrl hlp HelpNamespace hlp GetHelpNavigator ctrl hlp GetHelpKeyword ctrl
104. l control 431 history of user interface design 3 10 command line 3 5 GUI 8 10 menu driven model 7 8 question answer model 5 7 hit testing 494 497 nonrectangular shapes 496 497 HKEY_CURRENT_USER 151 LIZEN Im AI NAANLIIKNIT 474 Index byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Index I IBindingList interface 365 IComparer class for ListView column sort 213 214 IComponentChangesService interface 334 methods 335 Icon property of Form class 145 of Notifylcon 257 of StatusBarPanel object 251 icons drawing 482 for invisible controls 84 resource files for 318 for Toolbox 316 317 for TreeView nodes 229 230 IDataErrorlnfo interface 365 lEditableObject interface 365 IExtenderProvider interface 298 IList interface 365 Image object converting file name to 371 for double buffering 478 FromFile method 80 GetThumbnail method 286 properties and methods for controls 80 81 Image property of button 514 of Control object 80 of Label control 91 of PictureBox control 97 ImageAlign property of Control object 80 of Label control 91 ImageEditor 337 Imagelndex property of Control object 80 of TabPage 256 of ToolBarButton object 245 ImageList collection 201 204 code for 203 205 method to fill 204 properties 202 ImageList property of controls 204 of TabControl 256 of ToolBar con
105. ld Tag rowChild Chapter 9 Data Controls byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site ED army The Last Word This chapter has provided an in depth examination of the inner workings of data binding lt has also considered the best pra data source details In Chapter 11 you revisit this issue with a twist and examine a case where tight coupling is exactly whe The chapter also considered some useful examples about how to sidestep data binding and create custom controls that are excellent solution when you want to use controls that don t support data binding well like the ListView and TreeView Chapter 10 MDI Interfaces and Workspaces byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site LD ar Chapter 10 MDI Interfaces and Workspaces Multiple document interface MDI represents one of the most common user interface designs on the Windows platform MD windows like toolbars and floating palettes MDI windows turn up in some form or another in most complex applications an In this chapter you learn how to create an MDI application in NET and how it s dramatically easier to use and more flexible with the document view architecture Finally toward the end of the chapter you explore one of the trickiest aspects of MDI i The Story of MDI MDI windows have been the de facto standard for user interfaces for the past several years although their dominance is fadi windows instead For example
106. lerate slightly long winded code You also need to create a clearly defined plan for transferring data that can be st perfect nearly universal solution for transferring information Use a Central Switchboard The form acts as a switchboard for all the controls it contains However you shouldn t rely on forms for anything more Instea much logic To accomplish this forms should always hand off their work to another central switchboard like an application a new object in the form code and calling a single method However if you add another layer of indirection by forcing the fort little more independence and gets closer to the ideal of three tier design Figure 2 5 shows how this process might work whe calls a DoCustomerUpdate form method which then calls the required methods in the CustomerDB business object and Custos Fors Application Customerd Class Class Business Class ware ISAT Event Handler rer Update Method Figure 2 5 Using form and application switchboards Create Data Driven User Interfaces Chapter 2 Designing with Classes and Tiers byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Developing in Tiers The basic principle of three tier design is simple An application is divided into three distinct subsystems Every class belong identified as 0 A presentation layer which converts a user s actions into tasks and outputs data using the appropriate controls 0 A business layer where all t
107. lp with a NET application is by adding the HelpProvider control This invisible control shows up in Formi cs Design px Help Provider i rek rundert Figure 14 5 The HelpProvider The HelpProvider uses a basic HeloNamespace property that sets the help source This could be a path to an ordinary hlp f the designer with a name like ShowHelp on HelpProvider Set this to true and the help file is automatically launched if the You can also connect or disconnect help manually in code using the HelpProvider SetShowHelp method Just pass the cc private void HelpTest_Load object sender System EventArgs e This turns on F1 help support for cmdAdd hlp SetShowHelp cmdAdd true This disables it hlp SetShowHelp cmdAdd false Note There really isn t any difference between using the SetShowHelp method and the extended ShowHelp property provided by the designer With providers Visual Studio NET simply translates your selections into the appropriate method calls and adds the code to the form code So when you set the ShowHelp property you are still in fact using the SetShowHelp method You can also set the HelpKeyword and HelpNavigator properties in conjunction to configure which topic is shown when the H Table 14 1 Values for the HelpNavigator Enumeration HelpNavigator Chapter 14 Help and Application Embedded Support byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Invo
108. me and DrawSelectionFrame DrawMenuGlyph DrawMixedCheckBox DrawRadioButton DrawScrollButton DrawSizeGrip And here s one that draws the familiar dotted focus rectangle Chapter 12 GDI Basics byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site ED army The Last Word In this chapter you learned how to use NET s revitalized painting framework and the optimized techniques that make drawir master if you want to develop your own owner drawn controls like hit testing and the ControlPaint class The next chapter di Chapter 13 GDI Controls byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site LD ar Chapter 13 GDI Controls Overview Owner drawn controls are one of the most ambitious projects a developer can undertake This is not because they are conc handle all aspects of its appearance If you can create a control using composition i e a user control or by inheriting from hand if you need complete control over drawing and behavior or you want to introduce some of the unusual GDI features 1 The prime advantage to GDI controls is freedom The prime disadvantage with GDI controls is that they aren t nearly as a details manually 0 Scrolling support 0 Focus cues i e indicating when the control has focus 0 The pushed state appearance for a button control 0 Special cues or hot tracking appearance changes when the mouse moves over the control O0 Hit testing to determine if a
109. mmon controls The business tier Chapter 2 Designing with Classes and Tiers byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site ED amy The Last Word Three tier design is an abstraction No successful application will implement it exactly However it s also a powerful guidelir about DataSets and business objects in a book on user interface design In fact there are other excellent NET books writt interface tier can communicate with other parts of your program you start to make the transition from a simple collection of The following chapters of this book focus on mastering the tools of NET user interfaces Considerations for design and user model of NET This chapter was designed to give you the background in application architecture that you need to understar discover an entirely new and richer way to program user interfaces This chapter also introduced you to the broad picture of user interface in the NET world and the basic design assumptions itself allows you a considerable amount of freedom to create the exact framework that you want In later chapters you ll lear Chapter 3 Control Class Basics byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Chapter 3 Control Class Basics This chapter explores the Control class which provides basic functionality for the family of Windows controls You will learn I ll also introduce some important pieces of the System Drawing namespace that allo
110. mpressive or cool is no trivial task It can even make the difference tirelessly This kind of excitement about a program s look and feel has driven obscure products like Kai s Power Tools and ev in creating and maintaining sophisticated enterprise level applications realize that there is another set of design consideratio Application architecture determines how a user interface plugs in to the rest of an application Today s development softwe developers usually spend little or no time thinking about it User interface code is usually inserted wherever is most immedie tightly bound to a particular problem scenario or data source and heavily interwoven with the rest of the application logic 1 with anything more than trivial changes To make the jump from this type of scattered user interface coding to a more mode an entire interrelated framework This chapter explains how the principles of object oriented programming and three tier architecture apply to user interface de How controls and windows use objects Why inheritance is more important for user interface design than for business logic How the NET framework approaches user interface design and how it affects your coding practices What makes an interface data driven and well encapsulated What the dream of three tier design promises why it s so hard to achieve and whether other solutions are possible oo oo The emphasis in this chapter is on general concepts You ll see some code
111. ms MouseEventArgs e if e Button MouseButtons Left Add a square and update the screen Rectangle square new Rectangle e X e Y 20 20 squares Add square this Invalidate square else if e Button MouseButtons Right Search for the clicked square int squareNumber 0 foreach Rectangle square in squares squareNumber if square Contains e X e Y MessageBox Show Point inside square squareNumber ToString Chapter 12 GDI Basics byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 O Companion Web Site The ControlPaint Class Technically the ControlPaint class isn t a part of GDI However it s an extremely useful tool for custom control developers This functionality is tremendously useful For example if you want to create a special control that contains a list of items wi to draw your own and probably end up with a rather crude looking square With the ControlPaint class however you can u you can also turn to the ControlPaint class The ControlPaint class consists entirely of the static methods described in Table 12 5 Here s a line of code that uses it to d ControlPaint DrawCheckBox e Graphics new Rectangle 10 10 50 50 ButtonState Checked Table 12 5 Essential ControlPaint Methods Method DrawBorder and DrawBorder3D DrawButton and DrawCaptionButton DrawCheckBox DrawComboButton DrawFocusRectangle DrawGrid DrawlmageDisabled DrawLockedFra
112. of form 172 173 MaxLength property of ComboBox control 100 of TextBox control 96 MaxSelectionCount property of MonthCalendar control 110 MDI Multiple Document Interface applications dockable windows 429 434 with owner drawn controls 429 with timers 430 434 document view architecture 410 424 child form class 421 422 document class 412 416 OrderGridView class 416 418 OrderPrintPreview class 418 420 parent form class 422 424 essentials 400 410 interface state 408 410 layout 405 406 merging menus 407 relatives 402 synchronizing children 403 404 floating toolbars 425 428 and resizable windows 172 story of 399 400 types 400 MdiChildren property of form 403 MDIMainController 409 MdiParent property of form 403 Me keyword 35 WESER ee IB E E PU AA PAR Index byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Index N Name property of controls 62 Namedlmage class for bitmap thumbnail viewer 280 namespace importing 262 navigation BindingContext object for 374 375 in DataGrid control 381 reacting to record navigation 376 377 NET object libraries importance of learning 60 NET platform consistency in 11 custom controls 259 data binding 349 350 drawing optimization 480 font substitution 70 menu objects in 111 predefined colors 66 support for dialog forms 157 t
113. ontrols need to be filled man control of the entire process Maybe you want to create a control that can t be filled all at once but uses partial data reads o NET provides many opportunities for data integration without data binding One handy technique is using the Tag property Tag property to store any information or object you need For example you could use this property to store the relevant busi The next example shows a TreeView that embeds the data it needs to use the Tag property of each node Here s the code n DataSet dsStore new DataSet dsStore ReadXmlSchema Application StartupPath store xsd dsStore ReadXml Application StartupPath store xml Define the relation DataRelation relCategoryProduct new DataRelation Products in this category dsStore Tables Categories Columns CategoryID dsStore Tables Products Columns CategoryID dsStore Relations Add relCategoryProduct TreeNode nodeParent nodeChild foreach DataRow rowParent in dsStore Tables Categories Rows Add the category node nodeParent treeDB Nodes Add rowParent CategoryName Store the disconnected category information nodeParent Tag rowParent foreach DataRow rowChild in rowParent GetChildRows relCategoryProduct Add the product order node nodeChild nodeParent Nodes Add rowChild ModelName Store the disconnected product information nodeChi
114. operty If you use an entire DataSet th CS DataGrid CE A Products Categories Figure 9 18 DataGrid navigation links DataGrid Relations You can also make use of these navigation links to create a master detail list All you need to do is create the appropriate t Create a relation between categories and products DataRelation dr new DataRelation Products in this category dsStore Tables Categories Columns CategoryID dsStore Tables Products Columns CategoryID Add the relation to the DataSet dsStore Relations Add dr Bind the data grid dataGridl DataSource dsStore Tables Categories It s not as flexible as our custom solution for master detail forms but it works well with little tweaking required Figure 9 19 s Chapter 9 Data Controls byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Encapsulation with Data Controls With this exhaustive look at data binding you now know how to tailor data for your user interface without writing manual cod if you use data binding in the way I ve described you ll soon end up with a tangle of database specific details such as form typed meaning that if a field name changes in the database your user interface code needs immediate modifications to surv This state of affairs is far from ideal Luckily there are a few ways to minimize the problem One way is not to use data bindi You can then fill this table with content t
115. or MarqueeLabel control 509 Scroll TimerInterval property for MarqueeLabel control 509 SDI single document interface 399 segmenting information 16 Select event of Menultem class 117 Select method of TextBox control 96 SelectAll method of TextBox control 96 SelectedIndex event for list controls 468 Selectedindex property of DomainUpDown control 102 for list controls 365 of TabControl 256 SelectedIndexChanged event of TabControl 256 SelectedIndices collection for list controls 99 SelectedIndices property of ListView control 211 Selecteditem property of ListView control 211 SelecteditemIndexChanged event of ListView control 211 Selectedltems collection for list controls 99 SelectedObject property of PropertyGrid control 325 326 SelectedTab property of TabControl 256 SelectedText property of TextBox control 96 selection frame drawing 499 SelectionEnd property of MonthCalendar control 110 SelectionLength property of TextBox control 96 SelectionMode property for list controls 99 SelectionRange property of MonthCalendar control 110 SelectionStart property of MonthCalendar control 110 of TextBox control 96 SelectNextControl method of Control object 74 serialization of control properties 314 316 SetClip method of Graphics object 482 PA A eS ee Oe A A ET a Se E Y T Index byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Index T tab key focus change seq
116. or ones that mimic popular controls in professional applications like chapter and returned to in Chapter 13 with GDI Creating custom controls in NET is far easier than it has been in languages like C or VB where you typically need to emk controls can be difficult to distribute because every version needs to be registered Creating ActiveX controls also requires a and state management In NET creating a custom control is as easy as creating an ordinary class You simply inherit from the best possible ances an existing project and then decide later to place it in a separate assembly that can be shared with other programmers This chapter introduces the different types of custom controls and the types of problems they can solve You will look at sev techniques like creating multithreaded controls However you won t learn how to make these controls behave happily in Vis the next chapter Chapter 7 Custom Controls byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Types of Custom Controls Developers often make a distinction between three or four types of controls D User controls are the simplest type of control They inherit from the System Windows Forms UserControl class anc like a group of text boxes for entering address information Inherited controls are generally more powerful and flexible With an inherited control you choose the existing NET adds properties and methods The examples you ve looked at so
117. or the current text and the SizingGrip property which enables or disables the grip lines on the Alternatively you can create a status bar that contains different pieces of information This information is represented as a StatusBarPanel pnlNew new StatusBarPanel pnlNew Text Ready statusBar Panels Add pnlNew The StatusBarPanel object provides several appearance related properties see Table 6 11 Table 6 11 StatusBarPanel Properties Property Alignment AutoSize BorderStyle Icon MinWidth Chapter 6 Modern Controls User intertaces in Cr byMatthew MacDonald Windows Forres sn Apress 2002 Companion Web Site The TabControl The TabControl is another staple of Windows development it groups controls into multiple pages The technique has beco organized space It s also easy to use because it recalls the tabbed pages of a binder or notebook Over the years the tab c In NET you create a TabControl object which contains a collection of TabPage objects in the TabPages property Individua assuming your form contains a TabControl called tabProperties TabPage pageFile new TabPage File Locations TabPage pageUser new TabPage User Information Add controls to the tab pages The code for creating and configuring the child controls is omitted pageUser Controls Add txtFirstName pageUser Controls Add txtLastName pageUser Controls Add lblFirstName
118. or workflow and administrative software Almost every application needs to connect t site is really just an interactive product catalog that draws information from one table and logs transactions in another The s interface options for displaying data This chapter considers how you can use Windows controls with data I ll also share some advice about how to do it without fundamental topics 0 How to use NET s data binding framework with any generic control You ll also learn about the specialized DataGrid 0 How to create data aware controls controls that interact efficiently and intelligently with data sources without requii 0 How to use adapter classes and miscellaneous wizardry to help automate the shuffle of information through the leve Chapter 9 Data Controls byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site acy CEE Introducing Data Binding Traditionally data binding has been viewed with a great deal of suspicion Many developers feel that it s an inflexible clumsy Data binding usually suffers from several well known problems 0 It s inflexible For example you can only bind special controls to special objects and when you do you usually los completely as data controls don t allow you to participate in their work It s ugly When you bind to data you often have to display all available rows and sacrifice any ability to format dete friendlier representation forget it It s fragile Data binding doesn t follow
119. ore 367 369 multiple control binding 363 365 row validation and changes 372 373 updating 365 367 in ASP NET 20 basics 350 359 binding context creation 379 380 BindingContext object and CurrencyManager object 373 374 master detail forms 377 378 navigation 374 375 reacting to record navigation 376 377 DataGrid control 380 387 column mapping 382 383 custom column styles 383 387 relations 381 encapsulation 387 390 interfaces for 365 lists to complex objects 353 356 and ListView control 397 398 problems 350 simple list binding 352 353 single value binding 357 360 validation of bound data 388 390 data browser 14 data driven programming 457 459 data driven user interfaces 46 data layer in three tier design 49 problems 49 data transfer plan defining 45 data types Properties window support for 335 database help based on 545 546 integer comparison with enumeration 370 separation from user interface 387 388 storing records linked to graphics 371 table to map user levels for permissions 453 TreeView object for browser 51 52 DataBindings collection of controls 357 360 DataGrid control 380 387 anchoring 175 column mapping 382 383 ee nn SZ u en gt Wr es fue tee A Index byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Index E Edit method of DataGridColumnStyle class 383 editing ov
120. orm class 162 AddPath method of GraphicsPath object 484 AddPie method of GraphicsPath object 484 AddPolygon method of GraphicsPath object 484 AddRange method of Controls class 39 of Nodes collection 225 AddRectangle method of GraphicsPath object 484 AddRectangles method of GraphicsPath object 484 AddString method of GraphicsPath object 484 AddToDock method of MDIMain object 433 administrative utilities 12 13 ADO NET data binding 360 373 advanced conversions 370 372 formatting data before 367 369 multiple control binding 363 365 row validation and changes 372 373 updating 365 367 ADO NET data objects as data source 351 affordances 551 553 DE E A ra m A es As AA Index byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Index BackColor property of controls 66 background color for GDI drawing 481 gradient for 502 505 of square in drawing 448 background painting disabling 477 background process status bar information about 249 Backgroundlmage property of Control object 80 bar chart control to create 525 530 BarBreak property of Menultem class 115 BarChanged event 529 Barltem class 525 526 base class choosing 298 299 BeforeCheck event of TreeView Node 226 BeforeCollapse event of TreeView Node 226 BeforeExpand event of TreeView Node 226 BeforeLabelEdit event of ListView control 216 BeforeSelect event of TreeView Node 2
121. orting the required GDI namespace using System Drawing Drawing2D You can then create and apply the GraphicsPath The following example code defines an ellipse with the same bounds of th ellipse is displayed see Figure 5 25 Button Figure 5 25 A shaped form private void ShapedForm_Load object sender System EventArgs e GraphicsPath path new GraphicsPath path AddEllipse 0 0 this Width this Height this Region new Region path You can see part of the original window border at the top and bottom of the shaped form and the single contained button in portion that the original rectangular form occupied that is just above the left edge of the ellipse you will not select the form step forward with ordinary GDI code shaped controls looked like shapes but still behaved like the original rectangles in man You can also create a shaped form made up of a combination of shapes In fact these shapes don t even need to overlap TI private void ShapedForm_Load object sender System EventArgs e GraphicsPath path new GraphicsPath Chapter 5 Forms User intertaces in Cr byMatthew MacDonald Windows Forres sn Apress 2002 Site Visual Inheritance Visual inheritance is a fancy name for form inheritance which is similar to the custom control pattern you use to create spec things 0 Use a common form template visual appearance for several different windows This might be use
122. ost users can agr is accused of copying not praised for following convention Chapter 1 Creating Usable Interfaces byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site ELL ar The Last Word User interface is really a blend of common sense bitter experience and a little luck Many other books treat the subject in n for Programmers a short and insightful book from Apress There are also seminal works from Microsoft on Windows conve and no longer reflects modern controls and Microsoft s latest trends Parts of Microsoft Windows User Experience can be re A large part of this chapter has focused on a back to basics approach that stresses organization and logic instead of graphi anywhere it if looked like Microsoft Excel The dividing line is usually drawn between productivity applications and entertainn market for skinnable word processors isn t nearly as large Now that you have a basic understanding of what makes an interface truly usable it s time to shift your focus to the underly tiers have to do with user interface programming and how NET and C let you work with them Chapter 2 Designing with Classes and Tiers byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Chapter 2 Designing with Classes and Tiers Overview Some developers resent user interface programming because they believe it s all about painting icons rewording text and e Certainly making a program usable elegant and even i
123. pe of interface geared for the lowest and most corr current example of inductive user interface IUI design is Microsoft Money 2000 IUI is in its infancy No clear conventions exist and it s fairly labor intensive to design For most programmers it makes sens support You can read the initial IUI guidelines in the MSDN online at http msdn microsoft com library en us dnwindev htn Chapter 1 Creating Usable Interfaces byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Helpful Restrictions Most programmers fall into the category of power users of computer systems It s for that reason that it sometimes comes impose restrictions To a developer restrictions often seem to run contrary to the goal of application programming they mal overall abilities of your program but you increase the efficiency and confidence of the average user Restricting the User s Ability to Make a Mistake If you aren t careful a great deal of code can be wasted attempting to detect and deal with errors The problem is that once matter how carefully worded or helpful the error message attempts to be it s likely to make the user feel foolish guilty and the message appears to clear it from the screen and then try the same thing over again It doesn t matter whether you display this message after the user clicks the OK button or worse yet as soon as a field lose A better approach is to spend your energy preventing errors from happening in
124. r and provides a Dispose method that causes it to release its resources immediately Often invisible controls can be created more flexibly at runtime in your own code In some cases like when you want to sha example of invisible controls and are described later in this chapter Provider Controls Providers are a special type of invisible control They extend the properties of other controls on the current form For exampl O Atdesign time select the appropriate control and look in the Properties window for the property ToolTip on tipProvid O At runtime use the ToolTipProvider SetToolTip method You can also use the GetToolTip method to retrieve a co n Chapter 4 Classic Controls byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 O Companion Web Site ay CEE The Classic Control Gallery Now that you ve learned about control fundamentals it s time to look at some of the familiar controls every programmer know Labels Label controls are used to place static text on a form The text is contained in Text property and aligned according the Text Table 4 2 Label Properties Property Description Render Transparent When set to true makes the label s I boxes Of course you can t control ii other situations where you need prof AutoSize PreferredHeight and PreferredWidth NET labels support automatic resizi features set the AutoSize property t Image and ImageAlign Label controls can also contain a pici finer g
125. r colorB Color Purple private LinearGradientMode gradientStyle LinearGradientMode ForwardDiagonal Each member variable requires a separate property procedure For brevity s sake I ve left out the optional attributes you cou property invalidates the display ensuring that the gradient and text are repainted as needed Browsable true DesignerSerializationVisibility DesignerSerializationVisibility Visible public override string Text get return text set text value this Invalidate Chapter 13 GDI Controls User Interfaces in Ce byMatthew MacDonald Windows Forres sn Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Creating Button Controls The label controls are fairly easy to develop because they are essentially static pieces of user interface Other controls may box needs to handle key presses To create one of these controls can require significant extra code and thorough testing to To illustrate some of these considerations the next example presents a button that s been created from scratch by deriving A Hot Tracking Button This example develops a HotTrackButton that displays an image and text When the mouse is positioned over the image it M HotTrackButton Client TER 2 Ordinary HotTrackButton Disabled HotTrackButton Selected Hot TrackButtan AS Figure 13 4 The HotTrackButton This control project raises some unique subtle challenges 0 The clickable portion of t
126. racteristics of bad Help include It describes the user interface Users don t need to know how the interface works they will often discover that by 1 It s long Even HTML Help doesn t have the same bandwidth as a printed document and endless scrolling is sure t It uses visual clues Instructing the user to look at the top left or middle right may seem logical enough but with It omits information Printed documents can afford to choose what they cover However Help documents are ship or setting that s in the interface ooo GO To understand good help you need to recognize that most Help is designed to provide reference information Help really sh of information about a specific window or setting This is the type of information that all users need occasionally while workir On the other hand Help is relatively poor at providing tutorial based learning which explains tasks that incorporate many dif task based learning is generally frustrating for a number of reasons users can t see the help window at the same time they Ic are needed and most users don t want to read a large amount of information from the computer screen anyway When creating Help you should aim to divide it into discrete topics that describe individual windows complete with all their Tip Chapter 14 Help and Application Embedded Support byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Zn Basic Help with the HelpProvider One easy way to use He
127. rained control by using separa UseMnemonic When set to true ampersands in the access key and the focus is forward E LinkLabel This specialty label inherits from the Label class but adds some properties that make it particularly well suited to represent The LinkLabel handles the details of displaying a portion of its text as a hyperlink This portion is identified in the LinkArea p in the link Depending on the LinkBehavior property this linked text may always be underlined displayed as normal or it ma Here s the basic code that creates a link on the web site address InkWebSite Text See www prosetech com for more information Starts at position 4 and 17 characters long lnkWebSite LinkArea new LinkArea 4 17 InkwebSite LinkBehavior LinkBehavior HoverUnderline You need to handle the actual LinkClicked event to make the link functional In this event handler you should set the LinkVi you might start Internet Explorer with the following code Chapter 4 Classic Controls User intertaces in Cr byMatthew MacDonald Windows Forres RS Apress 2002 Companion Web Site ED army The Date Controls Retrieving date information is a common task For example requiring a date range is a good way to limit database searches text boxes that required a specific format of month date and year values The modern date controls make life much easier For one thing they allow dates to be cho
128. rence to the extender provider assembly any associated extender control automatically appears in the ToolBox The Menu Text Provider The MenuTextProvider extends ordinary menus by associating each item with a unique Help string When the user hovers o interface convention I ve mentioned before and while it s not very useful for the average user it does provide a good introduct Choosing a base class The first step when creating an extender provider is to create a class that implements the IExtenderProvider interface and us interface This can be any type of class including a user control inherited control or just a basic Component class that doe A control based provider like the MenuTextProvider uses a dedicated control to display information in a specific location on add the MenuTextProvider to any form and it will act as an ordinary status bar and update its display to provide the appropri StatusBarPanel class You could then add it to an existing status bar Choosing the object to extend Once you ve decided what type of provider you are creating your next decision is to determine the type of object that you ar classes To specify the appropriate type of object you need to handle the IExtenderProvider CanExtend method In this m extended by your provider To make this decision you can evaluate any information about the target including the type the true if the object can be extended The MenuTextProvider only extends the Men
129. ress 2002 Companion Web Site Index G GAC Global Assembly Cache 265 268 installing control to 267 268 GDI Graphics Device Interface 465 GDI brushes 490 493 ControlPaint class 498 500 coordinate systems and transformations 485 487 Graphics class 481 493 drawing methods 482 483 GraphicsPath methods 484 members 481 482 hit testing 494 497 nonrectangular shapes 496 497 for owner drawn controls 188 paint sessions 466 469 painting and debugging 480 painting optimization 470 480 double buffering 477 480 rendering mode and antialiasing 475 477 and resizing 470 471 window portions 472 475 pens 488 490 GDI controls button controls 512 518 details to handle 501 graphing control 525 530 simple 501 512 gradient label 502 505 gradient label design time support 505 508 marquee label 509 512 vector based drawing program 519 525 GetBounds method of Screen class 150 GetChildAtPoint method of Control object 72 GetContextMenu method of Menu class 113 GetEditStyle method of UlTypeEditor class 340 GetForm method of ContextMenu class 114 GetHdc method of Graphics object 481 Getlmages method for bitmap thumbnail viewer 287 288 GetltemAt method of ListView control 213 GetLicense method for custom LicenseProvider 344 346 GetMainMenu method of Menu class 113 GetMinimumHeight method of DataGridColumnStyle class 383 GetMinimumSize method of D
130. rmy The Last Word This chapter has toured through the most common Windows controls and demonstrated a few NET twists like owner drawr techniques you can use for drag and drop support and the best ways to integrate validation code into your forms The next Chapter 5 Forms byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 O Companion Web Site LD Chapter 5 Forms Windows are the basic ingredients in any desktop application so basic that the operating system itself is named after them This chapter explores how forms interact and take ownership of one another and how forms are used to manage events It will amaze your programming colleagues Finally the end of this chapter considers the advantages and limitations of visual i The Form Class The Form class is a special type of control that represents a complete window It almost always contains other controls The System Marshal8yRefObject ScrollableControl Figure 5 1 The Form class lineage The Form class provides a number of basic properties that determine appearance and window style Many of these propertie Table 5 1 Basic Style Properties Member FormBorderStyle ControlBox MaximizeBox MinimizeBox HelpButton Icon Chapter 5 Forms User Interfaces in Ce byMatthew MacDonald Windows Forres sn Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Resizable Forms Every week Windows developers from every programming language
131. rn about both types of dragging o Fake Drag and Drop True drag and drop is a user initiated way to exchange information between two controls You don t need to use drag and dr the following program that allows a user to click on a picture box drag it around and release it somewhere else on the form E Fake Drag And Drop TER Figure 4 18 Dragging a control around Conceptually a control is being dragged and dropped but all the logic takes place in the appropriate mouse handling events Keep track of when fake drag and drop mode is enabled private bool isDragging false Store the location where the user clicked the control private int clickOffsetX clickOffsetY Start dragging private void lblDragger_MouseDown System Object sender System Windows Forms MouseEventArgs e isDragging true lickOffsetX e X Q lickOffsetY e Y Q Chapter 4 Classic Controls byMatthew MacDonald 2002 O Companion Web Site Validation The best possible way to prevent invalid input is to make it impossible for users to enter it You accomplish this by forcing u the fact If you take this approach it s important that you report the error as soon as possible preferably before the user con Validation events were designed to let you check information as soon as it is entered rather than waiting for the whole form O0 Without it users might be afraid to submit a form because they know t
132. ro NET Ps me Sten Des cl y CAWINUT Ar META ee end teo Figure 7 2 Adding required assemblies Chapter 7 Custom Controls byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Inherited Controls Inherited controls are an ideal way to take functionality from the NET base classes and extend it An inherited control can k is filled with examples of inherited controls For example LinkLabel derives from Label and CheckedListBox derives from Lis Unlike user controls there is no design time support for creating an inherited control You simply create a class that derives awkward to use in Visual Studio NET For example it s difficult to add inherited controls to a form except through code Yot Inherited controls are generally more powerful than user controls and more likely to be used across applications and even c the reasons that programmers develop inherited controls are to set defaults for example a control that automatically config So far in this book you ve seen the following examples of inherited controls 0 In o In Chapter 4 you saw an inherited menu control that handles its own drawing to allow custom fonts and embedded o In Chapter 5 you saw inherited Form controls with visual inheritance o In Chapter 6 you saw custom ListView and TreeView examples that support specific types of data In this chapter I ll present two more advanced inherited control examples Inherited Controls or User Controls
133. rol project is a little trickier than some of the previous examples For one thing it limits your ability to use tt There s also more than one way to approach this problem One possibility is to create a custom Menultem class that stores public class LinkedMenuItem MenuItem public ToolBarButton LinkedButton To save space only one of the original constructors is used public LinkedMenultem string text base text public bool Enabled get return base Enabled set base Enabled value if LinkedButton null LinkedButton Enabled value On the downside this technique requires you to shadow the Enabled property because it is not overridable which is a slei extremely flexible approach You could even replace LinkedButton with a collection that provides a whole series of controls tl programming is used to test the LinkedButton property before attempting to configure the referenced control in case it has r The client program can create a linked menu using this class like this MainMenu menuMain new MainMenu Ha Ra ee a hha ea oe Chapter 6 Modern Controls byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site DD amy The StatusBar The StatusBar control is used to display brief information throughout the life of the application This information should never it This information should also be kept to a minimum to prevent a cluttered interface
134. roperty for the Form to true using the Properties window 2 Set the Language property of the Form using the Properties window You ll be provided with the full list of recognizer ProductCatalog System windows Forms Form Br Aj Be fy Icon Imeffode NoContral IsMdiContainer Fase KeyPreview Fase Default Chapter 11 Dynamic User Interface User intertaces in Ce byMatthew MacDonald Windows Forres sn Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Data Driven Programming An extreme example of dynamic content is found in applications that generate their entire interface using the information in data driven applications saving you hours of recompiling and providing other non programmers with the tools they need to n Occasionally a programmer develops a system that allows every aspect of a form to be defined in a database record or XMI specialized applications might use a scaled down version of these techniques like a survey generation tool that allows you 1 is a pricing application where the program must match the product catalog as closely as possible This is the type of applic A Data Driven Pricing Application The next example demonstrates that contrary to what three tier design dictates tight coupling between the user interface a Consider the case where you have a product catalog that changes frequently The scope of the changes aren t limited to pric different pricing schemes and discount structures If you write
135. s 2002 Companion Web Site List of Figures Chapter 1 Creating Usable Interfaces Figure 1 1 The archetypal command line interface Figure 1 2 The command line in Visual Studio NET Figure 1 3 A genuinely useful wizard Figure 1 4 A metaphor based calendar and organizer Figure 1 5 Explorer like user interface Figure 1 6 Two approaches to an audio recorder Chapter 2 Designing with Classes and Tiers Figure 2 1 A sample form Figure 2 2 Control containment for a sample form Figure 2 3 Two ways to interact with controls Figure 2 4 Ordinary forms and visual inheritance Figure 2 5 Using form and application switchboards Figure 2 6 Three tier design Figure 2 7 An intelligent TreeView database browser Chapter 3 Control Class Basics Figure 3 1 Control hierarchy Figure 3 2 A medley of different controls Figure 3 3 Control measurements Figure 3 4 A color changing form Figure 3 5 A simple font viewer Figure 3 6 Focused buttons Figure 3 7 The Visual Studio NET tab order tool Figure 3 8 An event tracker Figure 3 9 Common control picture support List of Tables User intertaces in Cr byMatthew MacDonald m Apress 2002 Companion Web Site CED List of Tables Chapter 3 Control Class Basics Table 3 1 Basic Control Members Table 3 2 Members for Control Relationships Table 3 3 Members for Dealing with Focus at Runtime Table 3 4 Events for Reacting to the Keyboard Table 3 5
136. se its Ensure Chapter 6 Modern Controls User Interfaces in Ce byMatthew MacDonald Windows Ferres sn Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Taming the TreeView The TreeView control provides a sophisticated infrastructure that allows it to be used in countless different ways Each indivi underlying data it represents That means that the TreeView is an ideal control for subclassing A Project Tree You can easily create custom TreeView classes that are targeted for a specific type of data Consider the ProjectTree class public class ProjectTr TreeView Use an enumeration to represent the thr types of nodes Specific numbers correspond to the database field code public enum StatusType Unassigned 101 InProgress 102 Closed 103 Store references to the three main node branches private TreeNode nodeUnassigned new TreeNode Unassigned 0 0 private TreeNode nodeInProgress new TreeNode In Progress 1 1 private TreeNode nodeClosed new TreeNode Closed 2 2 Add the main level of nodes when the control is instantiated public ProjectTree base base Nodes Add nodeUnassigned base Nodes Add nodelnProgress base Nodes Add nodeClosed Provide a specialized method the client can use to add nodes public void AddProject string name StatusType status TreeNode nodeNew new TreeNode name 3 4 nodeNew Tag status
137. sen from a graphical calendar vie example They also allow dates to be displayed in a range of formats There are two date controls Date TimePicker and MonthCalendar DateTimePicker is ideal for choosing a single date value drop down button a full month calendar page is shown The user can page from month to month and even year to year loo automatically The MonthCalendar shows a similar expanded display with a single month at a time Unlike the DateTimePicker it allows tl EE Date Controls BEE MorthCalendar Eu February 2002 Friday February 01 2002 Sun Mor Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat 21 2 a ZD T0day 2002 02 01 Figure 4 8 The date controls The DateTimePicker The DateTimePicker allows a user to choose a single date One nice thing about the DateTimePicker is that it automatically DateTimePicker Format property and the date might be rendered as yyyy mm dd format or dd mm yyyy depending on the CustomFormat property and make sure the date is always presented in the same way on all computers Figure 4 9 shows t E Date Format Long Friday February 01 2002 v Short 2002 02 01 v Time 2 26 51 PM Custom 2002 28 01 14 02 51 Figure 4 9 Common date formats The selected date is provided in the Value property One important detail about date controls is that they always use the Sy configure a date control to show only the day or time portion In this case you may need to be careful to retrieve just the
138. spend countless hours trying to solve the problem of re resizable wonders automatically These components are easy to use but generally provide mediocre results that aren t suita fixed size dialog boxes making them seem unmistakably primitive Most developers eventually give in and write lengthy co In NET the picture has finally improved Two new features anchoring and docking provide built in support for resizable forms themselves automatically The catch It s extremely easy to create the equivalent of the mediocre ActiveX resizing control way with far less effort than was needed before Matching a good resizing approach with a sophisticated interface is possible but it requires a little more subtlety and a few property Along the way you learn how to create scrollable windows and controls and see a full fledged Explorer style appl The Problem of Size The resizable forms dilemma stems from the fact that the Windows operating system supports a variety of monitors at seve on another or even stretch beyond the bounds of the desktop obscuring important controls For many simple applications these types of problems are not serious because programmers usually design their applicatic also generally accepted that users with much larger viewable areas expect to run several programs at once and purchased viewable area with larger fonts or extra white space in a dialog box However a document based application can t afford to ignore these cons
139. ss 2002 Companion Web Site Creating Controls at Runtime Creating a control at runtime involves a few simple steps 1 Create the control object as you would any other class 2 Set the properties for the control including basics like size and position 3 Add the control object to the Controls collection of a container control like a Form GroupBox Panel or TabPage 4 If you want to handle any of the control s events use the AddHandler statement to hook up your code To demonstrate this process consider the sample button generator program shown in Figure 11 1 This program creates a k to every new button s Click event ensuring that NET can capture user clicks and display a brief user message at the botto public class ButtonMaker System Windows Forms Form Windows designer code omitted private int buttonCount 0 private void cmdCreate_Click object sender System EventArgs e buttonCount Create the button Button newButton new Button newButton Text Button buttonCount ToString newButton Left int Parse txtLeft Text newButton Top int Parse txtTop Text Attach the event handler newButton Click new EventHandler ButtonHandler this Controls Add newButton private void ButtonHandler object sender System EventArgs e status Text You clicked status Text Button sender Text E Button Maker Chapter 11 Dynamic Us
140. t based application you should still pay careful attention to Microsoft s Internet and reading email In some cases you might need to investigate another application like Adobe Photoshop in the Tip Remember when you follow expected conventions you don t just make it easier for users to learn your application You also help train those users for the next programmer s software Administrative Utilities One good example of a Windows convention is found in Microsoft s design of system and management utilities These utiliti Windows 2000 and later operating systems Microsoft uses this design everywhere it can even stretching the convention to Computer Management Cesc pte Adora thors Mave compinte arnt retrata e Bann Oper tore can rente cent nee ee Clee OCR At eters me Martani nia pap can hea mme winot at Chapter 1 Creating Usable Interfaces byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site acy Next Handling Complexity Some programmers and many more management types believe the myth that when users complain that an application is t often just to slap a new button somewhere that will supposedly make it quicker to access features and thus render the progr For example consider the sample audio recorder and its improved version both shown in Figure 1 6 It may be a little quic 2 Sound Sound Recorder Eh Ek Bea teo Create New Auch Fle Seve Arbo Pie Figure 1 6 Two approaches to an au
141. tely All help standards provide these advantages in one form or another In the next section you explore the Help landscape Chapter 14 Help and Application Embedded Support byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site E ar Types of Help Standardized Help has existed since the Windows platform was created and even in the DOS world in little known tools like through several distinct stages which are described in the next few sections WinHelp The WinHelp format used in Windows 3 0 still exists and can be used in the most modern Windows application Unfortunate Y CYS Concurrent Versions System joj xj Eje Edt Bookmark Options Hide Node CVS commands Net bwoking OVS Prev Spagn Files Up Top Guide to CVS commands 4 This oppendm describes the overall structure ot CVS commands and desentes same commancs in detail others ane descnbed elsewhere tor a quick reference lo CVS commends see Invoking CVS Meru Structure varal structure of CVS commands Exit sty ncicaling CvVS s success or tadure Default options with te cevre tie Globe ophon Ipbons you gwe to tia lott ol avs_command ammar iphone Iptons you que tn te nigh od avs command admir Admmistraton checkout Checkout sources for editing Dl Sheck t las eto the repository dit Show ciferances gawaan revisions j Figure 14 1 WinHelp a piece of living history WinHelp 95 When Windows 95 was introduced a new standard oft
142. th shapes that doesn t take this into account Figure 13 5 A flawed drawing program Solving the Bounding Problem Luckily NET makes it easy to create a control that has a nonrectangular bounding area In fact you saw this technique in new clipping region Figure 13 6 shows a drawing program that uses the region property to define control borders Note that this does have a side border appears more jagged byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site ED A Simple Graphing Control Chapter 13 GDI Controls The last control considered here is a simple bar chart It s a good demonstration of how you can create a higher level GDI supplied data The basis of the chart is a Barltem class that stores information for a single bar This information consists of a numerical val public class Barltem public string ShortForm ic decimal Value publ public BarItem string shortForm decimal this ShortForm shortForm this Value value value The data for a bar chart is made up of a collection of Barltem objects Thus to support the control you can create a strongly collection with the control but you would not be able to prevent the user from adding invalid objects to the chart data public class BarltemCollection public void Add Barltem item this List Add item public void Remove int index CollectionBase Check to see if there is an
143. to react to special characters like the arrow key perform character validation If you want to update the display or react to a changed text value in an input control you would probably not use any of thes are made The Changed event will fire if you modify the text programmatically or the user deletes the text with the right click Forms provide a Boolean KeyPreview property If you set this to true your form receives key press events when any of its cc useful if you are programming a customized interface or a game where you need to take complete control of the keyboard own context sensitive help system Table 3 5 Events for Reacting to the Mouse Event Description MouseEnter Occurs when the mouse moves into a contro MouseMover Occurs when the mouse is moved over a cor current coordinates of the mouse pointer Be handlers that react to this event can be usec MouseHover Occurs when the mouse lingers without mo Usually you react to this event to highlight tt MouseDownt Occurs when a mouse button is clicked Chapter 3 Control Class Basics byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 O Companion Web Site acy CEE Graphics and Painting Controls provide a variety of events and properties related to painting Table 3 6 You ll find information about how to take co Table 3 6 Graphics Related Members Member Description Backgroundlmage Allows you to show a picture in the ba Image or ImageList and Imagelndex These
144. trol 243 ImageListStreamer class 203 images storing records linked to 371 aw a en DE ER ua EN Index byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Index J jagged edges antialiasing to smooth 475 477 Java layout managers for containers 460 JavaScript 535 Index byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Index K keyboard control response to 75 79 KeyDown event of Control object 75 KeyPress event of Control object 75 KeyPreview property 544 KeyUp event of Control object 75 Index byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Index L Label control 90 91 with gradient background 502 505 ProgressBar control with 271 276 Tablndex property 73 74 LabelEdit property of ListView control 215 216 LabelWrap property of ListView control 212 Language property of form 452 Largelcon for ListView View enumeration 210 LargelmageList property of ListView control 211 layout manager for controls 459 463 LayoutMdi method 405 406 learning transferrable 9 Length property of LinkLabel Link object 94 LIC file 341 342 LicenseKey property overriding for custom license 344 LicenseProvider attribute 342 licensing for ActiveX controls 89 custom controls 341 346 LicFileLicenseProvider class 341 342 LinearGradientBrush class 492 493 LineJoin property of pen 489 lines drawing 482 LinkArea property of LinkL
145. trols byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Basic TreeView The TreeView is a hierarchical collection of elements which are called nodes This collection is provided through the TreeVi treeFood Nodes Add Apple treeFood Nodes Add Peach treeFood Nodes Add Tofu In this example three nodes are added with descriptive text If you ve worked with the TreeView before through its ActiveX ci doesn t require a unique key for relating parent nodes to child nodes This means it s easier to quickly insert a new node It able to distinguish duplicates For example the only difference between the two Apple entries in the example is their respe To specify more information about a node you have to construct a TreeNode object separately and then add it to the list In TreeNode newNode new TreeNode newNode Text Apple newNode Tag 1 treeFood Nodes Add newNode In this case a simple integer is used but the Tag property can hold any type of object if needed even a reference to a corre foreach DataRow drFood in dtFoods Rows TreeMode newNode new TreeNode newNode Text drFoods Name ToString newNode Tag drFood treeFood Nodes Add newNode TreeView Structure Nodes can be nested in a complex structure with a virtually unlimited number of layers Adding subnodes is similar to addin collection TreeNode node node treeFood Nodes Add Fru
146. ty of ToolBarButton object 245 PasswordChar property of TextBox control 96 Paste method of TextBox control 96 pens 488 490 PenType property of pen 489 performance custom controls and 276 for painting 470 PerformClick method of Button control 94 of Menultem class 116 PerformSelect method of Menultem class 116 permissions database table to map levels 453 hiding or disabling controls based on 457 PictureBox controls 97 pictures See images pie shape drawing 483 filling 483 Bo Se Index byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Index Q question answer user interface 5 7 Index byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Index R radio button container for 104 drawing 499 RadioButton controls 96 97 RadioCheck property of Menultem class 115 read only DataGrid overriding methods to prevent editing 383 384 ReadOnly control property attribute 313 ReadOnly property of TextBox control 96 RebuildChart method 527 528 recompiling projects 195 records in database process for adding 365 RecreatingHandle property of Control object 82 rectangle drawing 483 filling 483 hit testing 494 495 references adding to project 262 referencing custom controls 263 265 Refresh method of Control object 80 refresh with double buffering 478 RefreshChildren method 403 404 RefreshList metho
147. uence 72 74 TabControl 254 256 TabCount property of TabControl 256 Tabindex property of Control object 73 table of contents in WinHelp 533 Table property of DataView class 362 tables in DataSet object 52 TabPage control properties 256 TabPages property of Control object 254 TabStop property of Control object 73 Tag property of Control object 62 of controls 391 392 of ToolBarButton object 245 Tahoma font 69 task based help 546 548 testing custom controls 321 326 for design mode 323 325 text boxes connecting to array 357 customized 33 34 setting limits 18 Text property of button 514 of Control object 69 70 of DateTimePicker control 108 of DomainUpDown control 102 of GDI control 504 of list controls 365 of Listltem 213 of MarqueeLabel control 509 of Menultem class 116 of Notifylcon 257 of StatusBar control 250 of StatusBarPanel object 251 of TabPage 256 of ToolBarButton object 245 TextAlign property of ToolBar control 243 TextBox controls 94 96 masked 294 297 TextRenderingHint property of Graphics object 481 TextureBrush class 493 494 this keyword 195 threads for asynchronous printing 421 in BitmapViewer 286 289 modal windows and 155 en inne AO PA nn A FPA Index byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Index U UlTypeEditor classes 507 508 custom 339 341 prebuilt 337 338 UML Unified
148. ultem object Here s the code that enforces this restriction public class MenuTextProvider StatusBar IExtenderProvider public bool CanExtend object extendee if extendee GetType typeof Menultem return true else Chapter 7 Custom Controls byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site ED amy The Last Word This chapter considered one of the most important ingredients in advanced user interfaces custom controls You learned hc also learned about inherited controls and the different model they provide One topic that hasn t been considered in great detail is Visual Studio NET s sometimes quirky design time support of custo develop the designers and type editors that allow them to behave properly in the IDE Chapter 8 Design Time Support for Custom Controls byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site LD a Chapter 8 Design Time Support for Custom Controls Overview The Custom Controls you have explored so far are full of promise Being able to drop a tool like a directory browser or thumt advantage However there is one caveat Though your custom controls perform wonders at runtime many of them act oddly appear with a generic icon Inherited controls need to be created in code unless you create a similar control and manually This chapter sorts through these quirks and shows how to create a control that behaves properly at design tim
149. understanding of the issues involved To understand the different styles of ListView it helps to create a simple example First create a ListView and two ImageLi listAuthors SmalllmageList imagesSmall listAuthors LargelmageList imagesLarge Once the ImageList is associated images can be assigned to individual list items by setting a convenient Imagelndex prope What follows is the code needed to load information into a ListView in response to a button click This example relies on a databases and NET although you can look at the online code for this chapter to see the details As with most of the examr private void cmdFillList_Click object sender System EventArgs e Fill a DataTable using a helper class not shown DataTable dt StoreDB GetProducts foreach DataRow dr in dt Rows Create the item with the text from the ModelName field ListViewItem listItem new ListViewItem dr ModelName ToString Giv very item the same picture listItem ImageIndex 0 Add the item to the ListView listAuthors Items Add listItem This is ListView code is at its simplest ListViewltem objects are created and added to the list The ListViewltem constructo must use the exact same ordering The appropriate picture is chosen based on the view style gms aa a Fi _ a a oe as e re a o ae pare A a q 2 a pep Chapter 6 Modern Controls byMatthew MacDonald
150. vent 135 136 validation 135 142 of bound data 388 390 and business objects 53 in database updates 372 373 for enumerations 336 with ErrorProvider control 138 140 example 136 137 with regular expressions 140 142 Value property of DateTimePicker control 108 of ProgressBar control 104 of TrackBar control 104 variables public class vs properties 276 vector based drawing program 519 525 Verbs property 329 versioning interfaces for 28 view in MDI interface 410 updating 414 View Mediator design pattern 40 41 View property of ListView control 211 view styles for ListView 210 switching between 208 Visible property of Control object 74 of Menultem class 116 of Notifylcon 257 of ToolBarButton object 245 Visited property of LinkLabel Link object 94 VisitedLinkColor property of LinkLabel control 93 visual inheritance 193 198 and ancestor form 195 overriding event handler 197 198 Visual Studio NET adding ActiveX control to project 86 90 code generation 37 39 Command window 4 control layout 66 for interface creation 435 436 Menu designer 118 MSDN help in 535 opening two instances for testing 321 322 rebuilding client project 263 tab order settings for controls 73 Index byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Index W Warp method of GraphicsPath object 484 Web Browser control 89 Web controls 29 Web
151. vides the following 0 An overview of how to design elegant user interfaces the average user can understand This is addressed 0 Acomprehensive examination of the user interface controls and classes in NET Although this book is not a including providers components and custom controls 0 A tutorial with best practices and design tips for coding user interfaces and integrating help As a develope an entire user interface framework that s scalable flexible and reusable What This Book Doesn t Teach You Of course it s just as important to point out what this book doesn t contain 0 A description of core NET concepts like namespaces assemblies exception handling and types These fundamen including a number of excellent C and VB NET books from Apress A primer on object oriented design No NET programmer can progress very far without a solid understanding of cla objects to encapsulate organize and transfer information A reference for Visual Studio NET The new integrated design environment provides powerful customization autom control designers for the most part it assumes that you already know how to use IDE to create controls and set pro A comparison between NET and its predecessors including Visual Basic C and even Java Examining the evo master modern NET development any faster The best approach is to leave your past language allegiances behind If you haven t learned the NET fundamentals you will probably still be a
152. w MacDonald Windows Forres sn Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Focus and the Tab Sequence In the Windows operating system a user can only work with one control at a time The control that is currently receiving the example the button control uses a dotted line around its caption to show that it has the focus Figure 3 6 shows focused ar Focused Unfocused Unfocused i Focused pl Figure 3 6 Focused buttons To move the focus the user can click the mouse or use the tab key The developer has to take some care to make sure thai developer also has to choose the control that should receive the focus when the window is first presented All controls that support focusing provide a Boolean TabStop property When set to true the control can receive focus Whe Tip You should set the TabStop property to false for controls that can accept key presses but are not directly accessed by the user in your application For example you might provide a DataGrid control but use it to display static information Of course setting the TabStop to false also means the user will need to use the mouse to scroll the control if its contents extend beyond the bounds of its display region To set the tab order you configure a control s Tablndex property The control with a Tablndex of O gets the focus first Wher accept focus Visual Studio NET provides a special tool shown in Figure 3 7 that allows you to quickly set tab order Just desired order
153. w you to create structures that represe The Windows Forms Package NET provides two toolkits for user interface design one for web applications and one for Windows development This chap interfaces found in everything from office productivity software to arcade games The one detail that all these applications he present information and receive user input It s easy to imagine that Windows Forms refers to a special part of the NET class library where fundamental classes like is the technology that allows the Common Language Runtime to interact with control objects and translate them into the low and windows and the Common Language Runtime handles the details like routing messages keeping track of window hanc This idea isn t new In the past developers have used the MFC framework in C WFC in J and Visual Basic s own Rut These frameworks all provide an object oriented wrapper around the Windows API which on its own is a disorganized colle have all suffered from a few problems 0 Lack of consistency If you learn how to use MFC you still won t know anything about creating Visual Basic user ir dramatically different object models and philosophies 0 Thin layer thick layer problems Frameworks tend to be either easy to use or powerful but not both MFC is real Visual Basic developers have the benefit of a simple framework but face the lingering dread that they will need to d 0 Subjugation to Windows API rules The Windows API dictates
154. y other project that needs to use the control Figure 7 1 shows LJ us Me Projects A Youd CH Prods oO Setup ad Deployment Projects CJ Other Projects LJ Vasa Sudo Sob tons ASP MET Wee ASP NET Web web Contre Acokeanien Service Leary A project for creating classes to use In other applications tano Sasiiray1 Location lo Pra coo manng MEA user iro Browse Add te Sckukin ose Sorton Propect wil be created at Ont Program MET User terfacect lt A iCodo Captor G7 CaceLiteary i vive Cee Figure 7 1 Creating a control project When you begin your control project you will probably find that you need to add a few assembly references and import som missing reference Typically you need to add references to the System Windows Form dll System Drawing dll and System Design assemblie Add Helerence Sythe Ceoctory Services 3 10 3300 0 C WINNT Mack NET ra Systen d 1 0 3300 0 C WINNT Maresolt MET Fra System Drawers Denen 1 0 2000 0 VWI Merosot METERS System Crawng dl 10 3300 0 CWI tcresolt JET 8 Syster brterprmeservyces 10 5200 WIR Ptcrosoft ME ra System Management 10 200 0 C WINNT Hcet NETA System Messaging 1 0 3200 0 CWINMTWcresolt MET Fra Srs stire Renit 1 0 3300 0 AWIT crossit NET Fra Gyere lurere orador 10 300 CWI Mereni JETP a System Seca y 10 3000 0 CWWINMTWtcresolt NENra nto error A nenn COMIN rean METER pe Syste wirds Forte S 7 C YannaiT mieroneit NET Fram Syst Den A CAMINAT Ac
155. y you resize or move a window To make a long story short convention is the way that users learn to work with a variety of software Violating convention be the amount of information a user needs to know to use computer software Consistency in NET Microsoft has made no secret that one of its goals with the NET platform is to make the programming model more consiste set of data types and functionality drawn from a shared class library You can see this in the lavish use of interfaces and inh You can even see this in the way Visual Studio NET allows you to use its powerful debugging tools regardless of whether y In short if consistency is so prized by cutting edge software developers why would anyone assume it s not just as importan The Act Like Microsoft Principle Windows developers have it rather easy The secret to making a program that the average user can understand and even the best choices in their applications but for the most part that isn t important If the users of your application have ever use Explorer In fact if your users are regular computer users they probably spend the majority of their computing time with Wo There s rarely a good reason for deviating from Microsoft standards If average users have learned anything it s the commor pour ridiculous amounts of money into extensive usability tests suggesting that their designs might not only be more recog If you aren t creating an office productivity or documen
156. ypes 25 28 user interface classes 29 39 vs Windows API 58 59 New Project dialog box for Class Library creation 261 Node property of TreeViewEventArgs object 227 Nodes collection manipulating 223 226 selecting nodes 226 228 in TreeView control 218 219 Nodes property of TreeView control 328 Notifylcon 257 NotifyParentProperty control property attribute 313 novice users 14 NumericUpDown control 103 Index byMatthew MacDonald Apress 2002 Companion Web Site Index O object oriented programming encapsulation 44 46 objects 24 28 choosing for extending 299 in list control Items property 100 Offset method for Rectangle object 495 OLE color code 67 OnClick method overriding 518 OnDocumentChanged method 414 OnKeyPress method 39 online examples See project examples online help advantages 532 OnMouseDown method overriding for button 515 516 OnMouseLeave method overriding for button 515 OnMouseMove method overriding for button 515 OnMouseUp method overriding for button 515 516 OnPaint method 469 for MarqueeLabel control 510 511 OnPaintBackground method for MarqueeLabel control 510 511 overriding for gradient fill 504 overriding to reduce flicker 477 OnSelect method overriding 254 Opacity property of Form class 145 Open method in MDI interface 415 OpenFileDialog 170 ordering program 411 424 child form class 42

User Interfaces in C#-Windows Forms and Custom

Contents

Download Pdf Manuals

Related Search

Related Contents