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MS Outlook like form design

Edhy Rijo — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 17:10:23 GMT

Hi,

I am working on a project which the main form layout will be like MS Outlook with 3 panels, Office 2007 like menu, etc.

What I am not sure, is how to position the ListBar on the left, the ListView on the right top and the description part on the right bottom part of the form?

I was playing with the ThemedSplitContainer, but this control will only handle 2 panels, and I believe I would need 3 panels.

FYI, I have the Infragistics controls, and would appreciate if somebody can give me a hint on how to work out this kind of form.

Thanks!

RE: MS Outlook like form design

Guillermo Vilas — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 17:10:23 GMT

Well... for me I will need to wait until next year when I get to the training course :ermm:

RE: MS Outlook like form design

Edhy Rijo — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:57:30 GMT

Great, so I'll wait a bit more :hehe:

RE: MS Outlook like form design

Trent L. Taylor — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:30:36 GMT

We have have a length section that in the training class that covers UI Designer and implementation...these types of topics and questions come up way too often...so they are now part of the training material. We will share tips and tricks, good UI design, creating re-usable controls, and a lot of other things as well.

RE: MS Outlook like form design

Edhy Rijo — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:11:58 GMT

[quote][b]Trent L. Taylor (07/03/2008)[/b][hr]You did what I was about to suggest in regards to the splitter. We had a similar need in our medical software and we wrote our own Outlook 2007 style control. It only took 4-5 hours to write...in fact, we will show this as part of the training so you will have an idea of what I am referring to.[/quote]

Well that is good news :) Since we did not have those panels and splitter controls native in VFP, I actually not used to that. Of course at this time I have try the SF Theme panels and GroupBoxes and I would like to start re-doing all my VFP projects in SF :hehe:

Still there are many things I need to learn like the User Control in order to make a form like this easier to manage and update in the future.

BTW, do you or anybody else knows about a good .NET form's design book which will explain all those little things and tricks to design this kind of forms?

RE: MS Outlook like form design

Trent L. Taylor — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 14:55:28 GMT

You did what I was about to suggest in regards to the splitter. We had a similar need in our medical software and we wrote our own Outlook 2007 style control. It only took 4-5 hours to write...in fact, we will show this as part of the training so you will have an idea of what I am referring to.

RE: MS Outlook like form design

Edhy Rijo — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 13:59:48 GMT

Thanks Guillermo and Aaron,

All I did was to add a ThemedSplitContainer and in Panel2 I added 1 panels, one dock=Bottom, then add the splitter dock=Bottom, then add 2nd panel dock=Fill and that will show the layout I want.

A bit confusing at fist, but guess it is right.:)

RE: MS Outlook like form design

Aaron Young — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 12:31:25 GMT

Hi Edhy,

The Infragistics Office 2007 ribbon is a toolbar so it can be docked without the need for a separate panel so two panels should be enough. If you need to split one of these panels further you can split it into further sections by adding further panels, containers or user controls so you can "make" a three panel control if you need too.

Aaron

RE: MS Outlook like form design

Guillermo Vilas — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:38:14 GMT

Hi Edhy,
I don´t have Infragistics, but to achieve this kind of layout you will only need two panels, one for the navigation panel and one for the content panel, the menuToolTip and ToolbarToolTip are just laying on top of them. but if you also need a reading panel then you will need to add two more panels inside the content panel and off course you´ll need two splitters . At least this is the way I handled it when I´m not using the Janus PanelManager.