Hi,
How many fully functional built-in styles does the licencied copy of "AppStylist" for Winforms comes with? I noticed that there are 19 styles with the downloaded trial version. Does the licenced "AppStylist" for winforms offer more that 19 styles?
AppStylist is not styling the inbox controls along with the infragistics controls even after adding the "InboxControlStyler". The form back color still stays GREY and inbox controls looks same. So, if we already have an application built with inbox controls and wants to style, do we need to replace all the controls with infragistics controls in the entire application? Isn't it tedious and combursome to do that kind of changes? Infact the application has to go through more testing than just regression test for the appearance.
By the way, do you have any tool that does replacing the inbox control with the equivalent infragistics control? Going through every designer file manually to replace the inbox control with infragistics control will be a tedious task.
Eventhough AppStylist give options to set colors for the inbox controls, but the consumer expects to have the styles work right away without having to spend a whole lot of time figuring out the matching color schemes for the inbox controls.
I did not see any infragistics control for a panel (like UltraPanel). Am I missing something?
Thanks
Sivaram
Civaram said:How many fully functional built-in styles does the licencied copy of "AppStylist" for Winforms comes with? I noticed that there are 19 styles with the downloaded trial version. Does the licenced "AppStylist" for winforms offer more that 19 styles?
I'm pretty sure the trial version comes with everything the full version does.
Civaram said:AppStylist is not styling the inbox controls along with the infragistics controls even after adding the "InboxControlStyler". The form back color still stays GREY and inbox controls looks same. So, if we already have an application built with inbox controls and wants to style, do we need to replace all the controls with infragistics controls in the entire application? Isn't it tedious and combursome to do that kind of changes? Infact the application has to go through more testing than just regression test for the appearance.
The AppStylist will style inbox controls like forms as long as there is an InboxControlStyle on the form. If it's not working, then either something is wrong in your application or the isl file you are using just doesn't do any styling for the controls you are using.
Civaram said:By the way, do you have any tool that does replacing the inbox control with the equivalent infragistics control? Going through every designer file manually to replace the inbox control with infragistics control will be a tedious task.
No, there's no automatic tool for this. But mostly, it's simply a matter of Find/Replace to replace the type of one control with another. For example, you could do a find/replace on your application and replace System.Forms.Windows.TextBox with Infragistics.Win.UltraWinEditors.UltraTextEditor. You might have to fix up some code after that, of couse - the controls are not always 100% compatible.
Civaram said:I did not see any infragistics control for a panel (like UltraPanel). Am I missing something?
The closest thing to a panel would be UltraGroupBox.
I like infragisitic controls but Infragistics should have made even better with styling the controls including the inbox controls. Atleast what I understood is that "AppStylist" can't be used from out of the box for an existing application (just like DotNetSkins, IrisSkin. However those products has their own issues and I would not choose).
Just to let you know that my intension is not to be negitive.
1. Out of 19, most of the styles seems to have similar visual appearance and does not show much difference. They are really not that appealing. I expected a lot that "AppStylist" would provide a stunning experience/appearance.
2. I put together a sample application to demonstrate the differences in styling the inbox vs infragistics controls. But I did not see a way to attach the zip file.
3. Panel have its own advantage of having AutoScroll and "UltraGroupBox" is really not a substitute to that. Well, we can have UltraGroupBox dock to the panel to see the styles, but it would be an unnecessay control sitting on the panel just to achieve the styles. Same with UserControls on the form and the backcolors doesn't match. Inorder to achieve the backcolors matching the "UltraGroupBox" styles, every user control must have an unnecessary UltraGroupBox docked to it. Again it will be like patches if we have gradient backcolor to the parent UltraGroupBox hosting multiple usercontrols.
An additional note- the majority of the built-in styles that were shipped with AppStylist do not style the Inbox controls. So if you are using one of the style libraries (ex: RedPlanet), the InboxControlStyler is working as designed- it's just that the Inbox controls are not styled in the style library. If you open up the style library in AppStylist, go to the InboxControls tab and change the styles, you will see them reflected in your sample application.
Hi Mike,
Thanks for your response.
The attachment size is around 755 kb and getting the following error.
"The maximum file size allowed is 200kB. Please select a valid file."
At this time I cannot load just 200kb. This will not explain what I mentioned in my earlier email.
Like you mentioned, I will try with the hidden IGPanel control.
1. I can undertand your feelings about this. Personally, I think the styles are pretty great. The styles included with NetAdvantage have to be pretty big and pretty generic, becuase they have to handle every control. It takes a lot of work to make an Application Style like that. The real beauty of AppStylist is that you can make your own styles. And if you create your own style, you can limit how much work you have to do becuase you know which contorls you are using and which ones you are not. And if you don't want to create a whole style from scratch, you can use a template or start from an existing style and modify it however you like.
2. You can attach files to your post using the Options tab. But remember that the Inbox controls are pretty limited. AppStylist can only set properties on those controls that the controls already support. So you won't get gradients and things like that.
3. Yes, I can certainly see your point there. You are welcome to Submit a feature request to Infragistics for an UltraPanel control. Of course, there's really not much new functionality you can add to a panel. The only thing it would do is have Appearance properties like the other Infragitics controls. Actually, it may not show up in the ToolBox, but I think there is an IGPanel control you might be able to use. You could also use a DotNet panel and just put another control docked to fill inside it, like an UltraPictureBox, for example. That would give you the ability to style the panel (by styling the PictureBox and still get all the basic panel functionality.