The "What do you think of how my app looks" thread

So yeah, I figured seen as one of the main benefits of using WPF is being able to make better looking applications, it might be a good idea to have a thread in this forum for people to post screen shots of their apps and just ask for other people opinions/suggestions on the look and feel.

Obviously people developing in teams/businesses have got many people to talk to about the look of an application but for us people that are just developing on our own, there often isnt really anyone to ask for advice on application design and layout. Hence the idea for this thread.

I dont know, maybe no one will post here and it will slowly drop to the bottom of the list but I just thought it might be a good idea to help people get feedback on their apps :)

EDIT: Plus, it will be nice to see some of the great things that are possible with WPF :)

Well I guess its only right that I post the current status of my main project at the moment, so here's what the main job logging screen looks like in it at the moment (still a work in progress):

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...8/current1.jpg

As you can probably tell, the 3rd item up from the bottom is the currently selected item.

and here is the 'dashboard' window that appears when the user first logs in and is meant to just provide them with a way to view some quick summary reports and the menu items at the bottom allow them to get into the various sections of the program (a text title for each menu item appears when the mouse goes over each one). With this screen I think I need to change the way the reports are displayed at the top as they dont look very good to me at the mo:

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...8/current2.jpg

the layout, is great, i like it, there's something i don't like though, i don't know what is, maybe the colors.

http://qmftsa.bay.livefilestore.com/...Untitled-2.png

Ok, this the contact mannager, i'm working on, Chris128 you know about it, the background and the Upper Bar, have different colors to chose from.
Please give tell me if you like this Graphic User Interface.

I like it, looks good. You might already be planning on changing this but the text that shows the name of the currently selected contact needs to be a colour other than black because its too hard to see (on that screenshot anyway).

Have you started working on the screens that let you create/edit the contacts?

Yes, i've made all the necessary windows, i made the dialogs to have full transparency if you are using Windows Vista, i'll post a screen shot later.

cool, yeah a screenshot would be good :)

http://qmftsa.bay.livefilestore.com/...Untitled-2.png
This is a screenshot showing different color scheme, while adding a new contact.

Only a very minor thing but the label that says "Group:" in that New Contact window is too small so the p in Group doesnt get the bottom half of it rendered. You see what I mean?
Also, I dont know why but I think it might look better if the New Contact window was a little wider. Probably just me though.

What are you using for the semi transparent information window? is it just a form?

It looks to me like he has just used the standard windows Vista Aero glass. You can use windows APIs (there may be an easier way that im not aware of though) to make it cover the entire window in 'glass' instead of just the title bar and borders.
However, Microsoft do have a guide on application styling in Vista and they do say that you should not over use 'glass' or something along those lines. I'll see if I can find a link

Chris128, i know what you mean of the group label, i fixed that already, thanks for pointing it out, and i don't know about making the dialog wider, it's seems fine to me, but thanks for your opinion i might do it.

And to extend the Aero transparency to all the window, i got a little help from thirtheen23, those guys are awesome!.

Come on, people post screenshots of your applications!

they are obviously all too ashamed of their hideous apps after seeing our beautiful creations :P :)

:D, i bet there's people here with awesome looking applications.

Actually Im too busy writing applications to colour your mistakes so they are easier to resolve. That and Im looking into a blogging engine for silverlight.

The first shots are a bit dark colored but looks great. The other ones with the green are a bit too green but also look great. Good looking shots guys.

Thanks, RobDog888, the background color and the toolbar color of my app can be set to be different colors, so i leave that to the user.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by RobDog888

The first shots are a bit dark colored but looks great. The other ones with the green are a bit too green but also look great. Good looking shots guys.

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Yeah I am finding that it does look a bit dark on some monitors, so I might make it a slightly lighter blue gradient :)

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Originally Posted by Pac_741

Thanks, RobDog888, the background color and the toolbar color of my app can be set to be different colors, so i leave that to the user.

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Ok cool, in that case you have it set. :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by chris128

Yeah I am finding that it does look a bit dark on some monitors, so I might make it a slightly lighter blue gradient :)

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Usually bsuiness software is more on the lighter side of color schemes too. Not saying anything bad, just an observation. Is yours going to be commercial?

Its supposed to be used in businesses yes, but its going to be free so I dont know if that means it is still classed as 'commercial' or not? :)

If its targetted for business then no matter free or paid, its a business app and thus commercial.

Tut, no one else has any nice looking WPF apps they want to show off??
This thread has been up for 2 months now and so far only has 2 apps in it :P

Well, my starting off with C# led me off wpf and onto XNA which I am having barrels of fun with!

:eek: your off WPF??
Is XNA the thing you make games with?

I thought you gave up on C# in favour of VB!?

Either way, you can use WPF with C# as well as VB so im a little puzzled how changing to C# led you off WPF :)

Well here is what happened....

The more I debugged x:Light the more examples I needed of how people worked with strings. Every example I found was in C# so I gave in to the dark side and start writing in C#. Once I got over the silly little quirks in Visual Studio I began to like C# for some odd apparent reason.

As I played with C# more I became more interested in the language than my project so I started to mess around more with sample code people had. This led me to find a sample game made in XNA and I got hooked. I'm not sure if it is the game making part or the engine part that has me hooked but I am really enjoying the XNA challenge as you really have to think about what your writing!

I seeeee ;) I tried my hand at XNA ages ago but as it was all C# I couldnt really get my head around it that well as I'm too used to using VB so I gave up on it pretty quickly lol
Is x:Light finished now then?

It it is more easy to use. On the subject of x:Light, yes and no, it parses Xaml fine but the C# version does not work so well. For that I have a mass of C# language specifications to read up on. I'm also looking at implementing a new rendering engine so that could be a while.

Well just to try and keep this thread alive, here's a screenshot of my new custom error message box that appears whenever an exception is thrown in my app. I didnt intend for it to turn out quite so similar to the windows vista dialog box style but now that its finished it does look quite like them... but oh well. It looks exactly the same on XP, obviously minus the aero glass in the title border.

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...rrorassist.jpg

when you expand the debug information section it animates the window height as it expands :)

Very nice except for the black button, actually I am in the process of working on a game level editor in WPF so I will update when i get some of it working!

Cool yeah post it up when its looking good :)

As for the black button, thats not actually included in my error dialog box class, its just that in that particular screenshot I was using the class within another project that has a custom button style defined for all buttons in the application, so it affects this one too. Might have to have a look at changing it so that this one overrides the default style..

You should other than that it's a really well presented box. How are you getting on with expanders?

You mean expanders as in that thing I've used for the "Debug Info" section? If so, yeah I find them to work perfectly well when you set what you want to be inside them via XAML instead of trying to use the designer to drag stuff into them lol you having a problem with them or something?

I was with the designer too but I also used the Xaml way and found it (like most times I use Xaml of the designer) easier!

Yeah I dont really use the designer much to be honest, it changes too many things that you dont want changing half the time. I use Blend occasionally to make gradient brushes etc but I do pretty much everything else through XAML or code

Lol power user, man my WPF has got very rusty I really need to brush up on it!

same here mate, I havent used it for a couple of months... dont even talk to me about data templates and binding!

*shudders* I know I know, but this level editor should bring it back into swing for me!

My new custom messagebox class that now replaces all of the MessageBox.Show calls in my application :)

Just took a few screenshots to show the difference between the standard one. Any feedback welcome

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...onaldialog.jpg

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...ningdialog.jpg

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...tiondialog.jpg

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...longdialog.jpg

Hey! you got your icons anyway, please for the love of all that is holy get rid of the black button though!

Just making a little instant messenger application to help me learn WCF and I thought I may as well brush up on my WPF skills while im at it. Its nothing fancy and I havent spent that much time on it but just thought I would post a few of the screens from it to add to the examples in this thread that people new to WPF can look at :)

Here's the sign in screen - this screenshot is taken from a Vista machine but the whole thing (including the buttons) looks identical on an XP machine

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...ChatClient.jpg

I'll post the chat screens and the main user list screen shortly

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Originally Posted by chris128

Just making a little instant messenger application to help me learn WCF and I thought I may as well brush up on my WPF skills while im at it. Its nothing fancy and I havent spent that much time on it but just thought I would post a few of the screens from it to add to the examples in this thread that people new to WPF can look at :)

Here's the sign in screen - this screenshot is taken from a Vista machine but the whole thing (including the buttons) looks identical on an XP machine

http://www.vbforums.com/images/ieimages/2009/06/1.jpg

I'll post the chat screens and the main user list screen shortly

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You should try to improve the color scheme, and work a little bit on the close button as it looks kind of bad, but anyways nice layout and great application.:)

Yeah the close button is kinda shabby in that screenshot as the image is compressed but honestly it looks a bit better in 'real life'. As for the colour scheme, I realise some people will think its a bit bland so I'm going to provide a couple of different 'themes' that users can select from, this is just the one Im working with while I build and test the app :)

Well I said several months ago that I would post the 'chat' screens from that instant messenger I'm making and I've finally got round to it lol

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...8/chatting.jpg

and the colours change based on the user's status. So if a user that you are chatting to changes their status to Busy then that green gets changed to blue. here is an example, when the user signs out and you still have the chat window open it will change to grey:

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...ng-offline.jpg


Oh and here is the main contact list screen (I've added a few things since I took this screenshot but its still pretty similar):

http://www.vbforums.com/images/ieimages/2009/07/1.jpg

chris128, aside from the black button that is cool! Care to share the code for that? =)

What black button? and which code do you mean, the XAML or the entire project?

Oooppss, I was looking at your custom messagebox screenshot when I posteda quick reply, didn't realize this thread had two pages.

ah right haha fair enough :) I can post the source code + XAML for my custom messagebox if you want?

I am particularly interested with how you manage to resize the form and limit it when the text grows longer than usual and instead wrap it, so I am kin at looking how you did it. =)

Well all that sort of stuff was done in XAML so here's the XAML code - this is for a slightly different colour scheme and title bar style than the one in the screenshots but same kind of thing. See attached file.

I guess the bits you are interested in are just using the TextWrapping property of the TextBlock, using WrapPanels, and using the SizeToContent property of the Window in combination with the MaxWidth and MaxHeight properties

Thanks chris!

Here's a screenshot of a Point Of Sale Application I developed for a small supermarket: http://www.vbforums.com/attachment.p...1&d=1264209008

hey thats nice, I like the simple style it looks really good. Your text looks incredibly clear and crisp for a WPF application as well lol

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Originally Posted by chris128

hey thats nice, I like the simple style it looks really good. Your text looks incredibly clear and crisp for a WPF application as well lol

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Thanks a lot Chris.

A few screenshots from an app I released recently that uses WPF 4:

http://www.cjwdev.co.uk/Software/ADPhotoEdit/Splash.png

http://cjwdev.co.uk/Software/ADPhoto...ardResults.png

http://cjwdev.co.uk/Software/ADPhotoEdit/Edit.png

wow chris128, love those Ok and Cancel buttons.... How did you do them?! What do they look like when mouse is over, and pressed?

haha most of my apps so far look like they're from win95... but there is one revolutionary one, which has it's own whole skin, with curvy corners, shadow, etc that took me ages to create.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by xera

wow chris128, love those Ok and Cancel buttons.... How did you do them?! What do they look like when mouse is over, and pressed?

haha most of my apps so far look like they're from win95... but there is one revolutionary one, which has it's own whole skin, with curvy corners, shadow, etc that took me ages to create.

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Cool, would love to see a screenshot of it :)

As for the buttons, they have a nice fading effect that makes them get a bit lighter when the mouse is over them and then they go darker and the content and background drops down a little when pressed.
I made them by using a border with a gradient brush as the background and CornerRadius set to 6 or something (to get the rounded corners), then another border on top that is invisible until the mouse is over it and then its opacity gets increased over about half a second :) Once I had made it all I just used the "Group Into Button" option or whatever it's called in Expression Blend. I can post the XAML for it (excluding the animations) if you want?

Hi :wave:

Here's my contribution:
http://www.vbforums.com/attachment.p...1&d=1303803847
http://www.vbforums.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=83672&stc=1&d=1303803847

The background images are Photoshoped and this application is written in VB6.
The purpose of this application is to grab the results from my university's site (parsing HTML page) and can calculate some extra fields like Total, Percent, etc. and will create a shortened message with the result, which can be send as a text message.

:wave:

:eek: you posted a VB6 app in the WPF forum :eek: :eek: :D