Form Layout: Constructive Criticism

[CodedFire]

You weren't lying when you said you where drawing it all yourself huh, i notice some of the main functions are missing (for obvious reasons of course). But i definitely get how your doing it now.

[dom_stapleton]

I have reorganised the contact window a bit, but I am still using the TabControl at the moment. I will start working on collapsable sections as well as you suggested, Lord_Orwell, but this will probably take a while.



Which functions were missing, CodedFire? I didn't deliberately leave any out...

[CodedFire]

Sorry i wasnt being cheeky, i thought you where protecting your work. Um, this one here: MakeWindowGlass(Me.Handle, 0, 0, 40, 0)

[dom_stapleton]

Check out this post:

http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.p...98#post3247798

There's a class that contains the necessary code for drawing glowing text on a form there.

[Lord Orwell]

while i have a good idea for the interface, i have no idea how you would go about creating the effect, unless there's a vb.net control i am not aware of that has that functionality? Actually something closer to the design of the way the visual studio toolbox is done would be much cooler, and you could fit more on screen at once.

[dom_stapleton]

There is a control that inherits from the Panel control. It has a header that, when clicked, expands and collapses it, so that won't be too much of a problem.

The header of this control is custom painted so emulating the Visual Studio toolbox should be quite easy.

PS: I've updated the form image in post #42 slightly.

[dom_stapleton]

Sorry, CodedFire, this is the code for the MakeWindowGlass method:

Private Structure MARGINS
    Public cxLeftWidth As Integer
    Public cxRightWidth As Integer
    Public cyTopHeight As Integer
    Public cyBottomHeight As Integer
End Structure

<DllImport("dwmapi.dll", CallingConvention:=CallingConvention.Winapi, CharSet:=CharSet.Auto)> _
Private Function DwmExtendFrameIntoClientArea(ByVal hWnd As IntPtr, ByRef pMarinset As MARGINS) As Integer
End Function

Private Sub MakeWindowGlass(ByVal hWnd As IntPtr, ByVal leftMargin As Integer, ByVal rightMargin As Integer, ByVal topMargin As Integer, ByVal bottomMargin As Integer)

    Dim margins As New MARGINS
    With margins
        .cxLeftWidth = leftMargin
        .cxRightWidth = rightMargin
        .cyTopHeight = topMargin
        .cyBottomHeight = bottomMargin
    End With
    DwmExtendFrameIntoClientArea(hWnd, margins)

End Sub

[Lord Orwell]

There is a control that inherits from the Panel control. It has a header that, when clicked, expands and collapses it, so that won't be too much of a problem.

The header of this control is custon painted so emulating the Visual Studio toolbox should be quite easy.

PS: I've updated the form image in post #42 slightly.

could you be more specific? I would love to know what control it is so i can make collapsible panels myself.

[dom_stapleton]

could you be more specific? I would love to know what control it is so i can make collapsible panels myself.

Follow the "XP Common Controls Library" link in my signature. This guy has made a control, called a TaskBox, that performs this functionality.

[CodedFire]

Excellent code! Thanks Dom!

[Lord Orwell]

Follow the "XP Common Controls Library" link in my signature. This guy has made a control, called a TaskBox, that performs this functionality.

his site says "won't work without xp". This probably isn't an issue if it also works on vista, but it doesn't say.

[dom_stapleton]

I think he means that the theming of the control doesn't work without XP as it's hardcoded to syncronise with the old XP themes. The basic principle of the control still works though.

[dom_stapleton]

[Lord Orwell]

lol i used to run a program i designed in a prison's motorpool to track work done to their fleet (86 vehicles). You could delete records, but you had to enter a password to do so.

[dom_stapleton]

Updated the window again a bit. Based it on the new Windows Explorer style from Windows 7. I've simplified the menu system too, like IE 7.

[Lord Orwell]

Only thing i personally don't like is the save/save and close/close trio of buttons. I would either make the save and close a dropdown and have the other two buttons in it or have a separate save and a close button, with the close button prompting you to save if you haven't.

More feedback: The close button is in fact completely unnecessary since the form has a close button. I am a big fan of standard interfaces as well and it seems to me the standard nomenclature labels them as "exit" not close.

[dom_stapleton]

Thanks for your post, Lord_Orwell.

I take your point with the Save, Save and Close and Close buttons. I'm just going to replace them with Save and Revert (reverts the contact to the state it was in when it was last saved).

As for the use of the term Close: I feel this is the correct term as the window is merely a child window of a bigger application. My main window has an Exit menu option as it actually exits the application. Close denotes that it just closes this one window, which is what it does.

[Lord Orwell]

ok that's fine then. I wasn't aware it was part of a MDI.