[RESOLVED] Outlook Look and Feel. How???

[rjbudz]

Hi,

My sup came to me today & says he wants an Outlook-like look and feel for the new app.

I found this http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=21657
which has a cool video about how to use the downloadable custom controls to create a great starting point.

The download is in C#. The custom controls are non-compiled items in the solution.

My problem is that I can not use them in my VB.NET app without compiling these controls seperately (right?) but I can't do that becasue I know much less about C# than I do about VB.NET (which isn't much). Give me this problem in VB6 and it's a done deal, but the 'net raves about how EASY it is to do this. The problem is always the same. Anything is easy once ya know how.

Aaaaaaaaaagh. Suggestions?

[conipto]

Shouldn't be too difficult. I've done this type of thing with VS 2003 before (not sure how it is with 2005) and All you usually need to do is Add a C# project to your Solution (in this case perhaps a control library) and then add that file to the c# solution, Choose Build Solution,

Then, you can usually access members like this:

Dim ClassInstanceVariable As New CSharpProjectName.CSharpClassName

And intellisense should help you out.

Bill

[rjbudz]

I tried whay you suggested. Unfortunately there seems to be a lot more to it. Adding a new C# project worked, but attempting to build the solution resulted in all kinds of reference and type errors. I tried to comment out sections that didn't appear necessary, but that just resulted in even more errors.

Unless I learn C# and then go over the code line by line, I won't be able to figure out why.

Thant doesn't sound very easy to me.

[conipto]

Well, it doesn't sound like a problem with mixing C# and VB.NET code to me.

If the C# project you want to compile uses references outside of System.Windows.Forms and the other 5 standard added references, you'll have to figure that out. Alternatively you can look to the writer of the code for help. You would have the exact same problem if you tried to add another VB.NET project with unknown external references to your project.

Bill

[rjbudz]

Thank you Bill,

I understand the problem would exist regardless of which language I'm trying to use. It's just frustrating reading that you can do something so easily only to find out that there is more to the story.

[conipto]

Otu of curiousity, did the project come with a DLL too? Or even, did it have a proj file with it, or is this just one page of C# code?

Bill

[kleinma]

Thank you Bill,

I understand the problem would exist regardless of which language I'm trying to use. It's just frustrating reading that you can do something so easily only to find out that there is more to the story.

Well your boss must have given you more details than "make it look like outlook"

I mean after all, your not actually building an email client are you?

Many of the fundamental ideas behind outlook can be done with windows common controls (like the treeview, spliter control, webbrowser control, etc)

So unless you are trying to make an app exactly like outlook, you may not need to use alternative controls. You can use the standard windows ones, and build off of them.