DotNetKicks.com - Stories tagged with winforms

Logging Messages in Event Logs

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 20:51:39 GMT

Microsoft Windows provides a built-in event logging system where informational messages, warnings, errors and audit details can be stored and viewed with the Event Viewer utility. This system is ideal for logging messages generated by a .NET application.

Introducing Office 2007 style Conditional Formatting in SuperGridView

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 06:26:14 GMT

This blog post describes how to use the cell conditional formatting in SuperGridView for Windows Forms. With this feature the data grid in your WinForms application will catch the eye of even the most demanding customers. The articles provides an example with a data bound hierarchical grid which renders a pivot table and paints the grid cells in different colors depending on their values.

Ways to set short cut keys for controls on a windows forms application

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 09:58:08 GMT

Setting short cut keys for menus, buttons etc are very easy in the .net framework, you just have to set the ShortCut property for menu items. And for buttons etc, you can indicate the access key to be used for the control by putting a & sign just before the letter which should be used as the access key like, setting the text of the button control to "&Open" would set the shortcut key "Alt+O" for the button. However, if you want use other key combinations for the shortcut keys like Ctrl+a, Ctrl+F10 etc, for any controls other than menus or if you want to provide shortcut keys for textbox, you can't simply set any property or use the & sign to indicate it.

Error creating window handle

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 19:17:52 GMT

I have been chasing a bug in a VB.NET Windows Forms application today. The error log was filled with Win32Exception Error creating window handle. Digging in the usage log I loacted the following code.

Stopping Custom Controls from being added to Visual Studio Toolbox

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 11:00:24 GMT

Useful attribute for adding to custom controls

Over 60 Free Controls from DevExpress

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 16:16:02 GMT

Once you register, you will be forwarded an Email with your login credentials to our product download portal. With this information in hand, you will be able to download and install all the controls and tools listed above free of charge. The applications you create with these controls can be distributed royalty free (see the EULA that accompanies the products for more information). Note that the installation you download will include evaluation versions of our entire product line. You can install these trials if you wish during the setup process. Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008 are fully supported.

Over 60 Free Controls from DevExpress

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 16:16:02 GMT

Custom configuration being loaded by a dll instead of an exe...

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 13:51:55 GMT

Explains how you can load a configuration file for your own dll instead of loading the app.config

DataGridView Custom Column Headings

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 08:03:11 GMT

A quick tutorial covering the method I recently used on a project to control and generate the column headings for a DataGridView and modify the column headings to contain "full text" values.

Pivot Tables support in VIBlend SuperGridView

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 04:39:24 GMT

How to create a Pivot Table in VIBlend SuperGridView for WinForms.

Frames per second in the DateTimePicker and TimeSpan editor

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 19:13:57 GMT

Smart FieldPackEditor.Net adds a new "Frames per second" field for datetime and timespan types in their respective editors.

How to drag and drop multiple outlook mail messages

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 13:43:10 GMT

A project came up at work the other day requiring the ability to drag and drop any number of mail messages or mail message attachments from outlook into a WinForm application. Easy I thought, this has to be a common problem I will just jump on CodeProject find an example and with a bit of tweaking be running in no time.

.Net super MessageBox

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 13:40:10 GMT

Some applications need a more advanced message box than MessageBox class provided by .NET. This article presents a .NET library called MessageForm that can be used instead of .NET MessageBox getting more features and improvements.

C#: Generate WebPage Thumbmail Screenshot Image

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 16:16:08 GMT

There are a few services out there that serve up screenshots of any webpage for you to display on your website. One popular one is Kwiboo; this is the one that DotNetKicks uses. For some time now I've wondered what the easiest way to do this in .NET was, and today I stumbled upon the undocumented WebBrowser.DrawToBitmap method that makes this extremely easy to do.

Detecting Windows Safe Mode

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:35:09 GMT

Microsoft Windows can start in a special mode known as "Safe Mode". In this mode, certain drivers are disabled and networking may not be available. If your software requires this missing functionality, problems may occur.

Control.InvokeRequired, DelegateMarshaler and Anonymous Methods

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 13:50:58 GMT

Tired of checking Control.InvokeRequired, and BackgroundWorker isn't flexible enough? Try out the DelegateMarshaler with anonymous methods to make sure they are called on the correct thread.

Retrieving the Installed Font List

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 22:07:19 GMT

A common task when creating programs that permit text editing, particularly What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) applications, is to retrieve the list of installed typefaces. The user's preferred fonts and styles may then be utilised as desired.

Windows Forms 2.0 - DateTimePicker Control Recipes

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 18:07:49 GMT

In this article, we will explore how to perform some common tasks using the DateTimePicker Control of Windows Forms 2.0.

How to Fade a Form using Windows Forms 2.0

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 11:38:09 GMT

There have been plenty of articles written on fading out a form. However I found them to contain a lot of code to do this simple thing. In this article, I will demonstrate how to fade out a form with just 5 lines of code.

How to Localize Windows Forms and Change the Language at Runtim

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 08:21:16 GMT

Localization is the process of customizing your application to a particular language, culture or locale. Visual Studio provides support for localizing Windows Forms with much ease. In this article, we will see how to localize windows forms and give the user the ability to change to his preferred language at runtime.

The Seductive Visual Designer

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 22:24:05 GMT

Is the Visual Designer the best tool in the toolbox, for every GUI task?

BindingListView .NET library for Winforms

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 05:53:06 GMT

Hi there, I'm currently developing a Winforms project where we want to be able to sort, filter, bind business objects to datagrid views. And I've found a .NET Library that just does everything I need, instead of using dataviews it just binds the business object to the datagridview. The BindingListView .NET library provides a type-safe, sortable, filterable, data-bindable view of one or more lists of objects. It is the business objects equivalent of using a DataView on a DataTable in ADO.NET. If you have a list of objects to display on a Windows Forms UI (e.g. in a DataGridView) and want to allow your user to sort and filter, then this is the library to use!

Writing Windows C# Programs

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 04:53:55 GMT

Learn to write C# programs for the Windows platforms.

Menu item usability vs. learnability

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:16:02 GMT

Lou Franco gives his take on application UI, inclusion/exclusion of menu items, etc. "A user interface is well-designed when the program behaves exactly how the user thought it would."

. Net development tools necessary:Snippet Compiler

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 07:16:03 GMT

Snippet Compiler is a Windows-based applications, you can use it to write, compile and run code. Snippet Compiler now has support. NET Framework 3.5, the latest version Snippet Compiler Live 2008 Ultimate Edition for Developers (Alpha).