newbie in wp8 development
say I have a long paragraph, instead letting user to scroll all the way up and down, is there any way to set the textblock (or other alternative control) auto paging (left and right), so the text would fill up the screen, then scroll right for the next page? tks in advance
There are no default controls which provide this and I'm not aware of any 3rd party offering such a control either.
The convention on Windows Phone and most mobile platforms is to have vertical scrolling for text. The exception to this is "books" where the paging metaphor is still used. But this is for more text than just "a long paragraph".
If you do build a control to provide the experience you're after then I strongly recommend performing careful user testing around the users expectations and experience around using it.
Related
How to manage FocusGuide in tvOS when you have container view/views? I'm using a MasterViewController and have more than one container view controllers and it all together act like UITabBarController. But when I navigate between buttons it's not navigating to selected viewController's preferred focus environments. Buttons are arranged horizontally and container view controllers always under the tabs. I don't know how to manage them.
My app has been running smoothly in the market for a long time. Now I can easily say that the container view controller does not matter.
All the elements we see on the screen work in the same logic. If the focus engine cannot find an item on the targeted direction (while you do right-left or up-down with the remote control), it will not navigate.
So how to fix that? You need to create an invisible focus item (a view) that automatically redirect to the preferred view. And you'll need the handle same for opposite direction too! You need to help focus engine for the current situation.
In order to avoid such situations, I recommend that you talk to your UI / UX department about the TV experience and re-arrange some screens if necessary.
Lastly, I highly recommend you to use default UITabBarController for Apple TV and don't create your own version of it until learning User experience of Apple Tv.
I have a legacy, X/Motif, C++ application for which new windows have been added using Java/JNI.
New Java windows have been either top level windows or dialogs with no parent.
Is there any reasonable way to get a child window created by the JVM, such as a JDialog, to have as its parent a window created on the native side using X/Motif, and if yes then how? This would still be useful even if Java AWT/Swing is not aware of the parenting structure and the window manager just kept the dialog on top of the top-level window (of course, having all the normal control over windows in Java would be preferable, just not strictly necessary for all uses of my question).
I am thinking the answer might be "No, not in any reasonable way. You would have to do epic surgery on both your native side and within the JVM." If that is the answer, then so be it. But I am hoping someone has an answer along the lines of "If you make this X call or that window manager call, you can get the window manager to supply certain dialog properties with the argument top-level window as the parent."
Essentially, I am looking to increase the integration between the C++ and Java user interfaces as much as possible. Right now, they are run as one application by using JNI, but the GUI windows/components are essentially separate, despite sharing data.
One benefit of this, already mentioned, is having dialogs not show up behind what the user perceives as the top level window.
Another thing I have considered, though I probably will not do (tell me how crazy you think it is), is to make it appear as though Java components are in the C++ window by getting the screen coordinates of a component on the C++ side, displaying a borderless window on the Java side at that screen location, so it looks like it's part of the C++ application. I can think of so many negative side effects of this, though, that I would not do it unless there was a simple way to negate them (focus issues, a window displaying between this dummy window and the real top level window, and other things would affect user experience). Even avoiding this, though, there are still benefits to an affirmative answer to my question.
If you're using the XToolkit (Java 1.7+), you can proceed as follows:
Get the numeric id of the native peer of a java.awt.Window instance (see this answer).
Find the corresponding X11 Window struct by its id by iterating the clients of the X server (see the sources of xwininfo and xlsclients utilities, also Select_Window_Args(int*, char**)).
Use XReparentWindow().
I'm a graphic designer/web-UI designer by trade but have some (albeit limited) knowledge of Access. I haven't used it for a few years now but have been asked by a company to redesign the front end of their split database that was built using Access 2010. They had a programmer design the whole database, and it works well, but they do not like the actual appearance of the front-end so they have asked me to update it with some 'modern design' so-to-speak (i.e. stylise the buttons, fieds etc.)
I'm just wondering, what options do I have with this? Is there any way to use CSS as such to stylise the front-end? Or is there any built-in design tools that are useful? I plan to produce concepts using Photoshop to show them but it's knowing the limitations of what can be done with Access in terms of the front-end design. Any help would be appreciated!
It can be done, but it's a major task because Access isn't designed for developers (not to mention graphic designers) but for superusers. Thus, tools like you have in, say, Visual Studio, you can only dream of.
But if you are prepared to spend hours with alignment near pixel level, it can be done - as you may get an impression of from the screenshots here:
Modern/Metro style message box and input box for Microsoft Access 2013
Indeed, design of subforms is a challenge as these are offset a few pixels when embedded in the main form; if you are to accuracy to the pixel, this will hurt your eyes. Also, listboxes have a habit of shift their layout slightly when required - just to mention a few of the tasks you will encounter. In fact, once you have made some neat forms and controls, the only tool you have to ease your work, is to copy and paste these when you need a new form or control.
The icons are from the SyncFusion Metro libraray, colours are strict to the MS Metro/Modern palette, and fonts and proportions are as close to the Microsoft design guide as possible. This was chosen for two reasons: First, the design guide is so thorough and well thought out, and second, I had no reason to believe I could do it better. That may be different for you, of course.
The application was for a custom project, and users' response was positive only, even from Mac users (using Remote Desktop) - they love the colours.
Access is built to be GUI-intuitive. There's no 3rd party tools to "pretty" it up, only to improve the functionality.
That being said, there's plenty of stuff you can do to improve the look of it. Drop an Option Group down, delete the label, change the Special Effect to "Flat" and the Border Color to dark blue and you've got a nice little box to keep relevant controls grouped together. Utilize the Back Color of the form to give it a little more appeal; I always find a softer "slate" blue looks appealing and professional. White or soft yellow text looks nice on that background.
Add a label that stretches all the way across the top of the form. Make its background color a darker blue and center the text for a very appealing "header" for your form, or you can do the same thing inside those option groups I mentioned above.
Most coders I've ever worked with were pretty happy making dull gray forms with non-aligned textboxes and calling it a day. Take a little time to snazz it up with a few ideas I've given (and any you can make up yourself) and it goes a long way towards presenting an application that people don't dread using.
Here are few other UI components that "..are possible" without installation GitHubPage
Which is the best way to show complex message boxes in Windows Phone 8?
These are the ones i know off:
Default
Windows Phone Toolkit
Coding4Fun: http://coding4fun.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=MessagePrompt&referringTitle=Documentation
I am developing a static game.
Im looking to have a sort of settings menu as a message box. As these are quick things that should be very easily changed.
Also, Is it a good idea to do the same for the main game menu.
The rational of both these is that the player should should not be taken away from the main game.
The message box can have multiple buttons, toggle switches, text boxes etc.
My 0.02$: It's best if game menus (start menu, settings menu, high scores, etc) are all rendered in native format as part of the game. That way those menus can have the look & feel of the rest of the game. That being said, that's a lot of work building those extra screens so it's really up to you if you want to shortcut development and reduce development time by using a substandard UX.
I am developing a web-based menu application targeted solely for Mobile Safari on the iPad (in other words, I am not at all concerned about cross-browser compatability). I have a form select box which contains a number of options the user can choose from to modify their order, which when clicked displays on the iPad as follows: Screenshot
The problem is that this box is not wide enough to show the user the price or even the full name for several options. Smaller names is not a particularly attractive option in this case. Is there any way in which I can either a.) set the width of this box (doesn't matter if it's a Mobile Safari-specific solution!) or b.) make it so that the box grows wider to accommodate the widest option? I can find nothing on Google that deals with my question save for one forum thread with no useful answers.
Javascript is an option, if necessary.
Thanks!
To the best of my knowledge I believe UIKit entirely with the popup. The only advice I could suggest would be to implement it solely in JavaScript. I've had a quick Google and nothing is coming up that stands out as a existing one.