Is cool GUI possible with C#/.Net?
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Is it possible to write MFC like GUI (cool office look, VS look etc) with C# and the .Net framework? I am starting a project that is kind of GUI intensive and have permission to use .Net if it will work for us. I would prefer to work with the cool new stuff. But then will I miss anything coming from the MFC side of things? How about 3rd party support? Dundas, Stingray, BCGSoft? Thanks a bunch! Suresh
Maybe you can try this one: http://www.devexpress.com/products/net/xtrabars/index.asp :omg::omg::omg: :-O beware that this product is still in beta but it will be released soon :laugh::cool:
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Hmm - Christian is such a ray of sunshine isn't he As I've said once already today, I'm ALWAYS arrogant and opinionated. However, do you disagree that in a work situation it's wrong to use a new tool just for the sake of it, when it comes with the sort of cost C# does, in terms of CLR distribtion, in terms of using a beta compiler at this stage to build it, in terms above all else of total lack of adequate reason to ? I know how he feels, I've wanted for ages to find an excuse to use ATL at work, but I've never found a compelling reason to do so and so haven't. So I did it in my own time. That's all I am advocating. I'll look forward to your article though, my book should arrive this week, and my latest DB should be finished, so I'll be allocating some of my spare time to some C#. Christian After all, there's nothing wrong with an elite as long as I'm allowed to be part of it!! - Mike Burston Oct 23, 2001
I really don't think time at home allows you the time needed to really get to know a technology anyway; I don't think I felt comfortable using ATL until 100+ hours - and I'm not sure about you, but to clock up 100+ hours on the computer out of work time would be - Ummm... (well besides email time) about a year. But, when I am using a new technology at work I do tend to work longer hours. Now you might say that that is the equivalvent of working from home; but no I disagree because you need to have a consentrated burst of learning to get you to that 100+ hour mark. And of course, if after the 2 weeks or so of delving in you find that it doesn't do what you want, then you have to spend late night for the next couple of weeks in extra time making up for it. But if you don't take a risk, then you never get results. Obviously you evaluate your options (study peoples comments, read a few reviews) but then you do have to risk. It is what the the modern world is based on. (ie. put your money in the bank, low risk-low return, on the stock market, well...) Have fun, Paul Westcott.
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Is it possible to write MFC like GUI (cool office look, VS look etc) with C# and the .Net framework? I am starting a project that is kind of GUI intensive and have permission to use .Net if it will work for us. I would prefer to work with the cool new stuff. But then will I miss anything coming from the MFC side of things? How about 3rd party support? Dundas, Stingray, BCGSoft? Thanks a bunch! Suresh
It's a simple example, but does answer the question 'Is it possible to write MFC like GUI (cool office look, VS look etc) with C# and the .Net framework?' Visual Studio .NET Menu Style. Over to you to decide whether or not it's worth embracing a technology that hasn't been released yet. We're looking forward to your comments! cheers, Chris Maunder (CodeProject)
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Hmm - Christian is such a ray of sunshine isn't he As I've said once already today, I'm ALWAYS arrogant and opinionated. However, do you disagree that in a work situation it's wrong to use a new tool just for the sake of it, when it comes with the sort of cost C# does, in terms of CLR distribtion, in terms of using a beta compiler at this stage to build it, in terms above all else of total lack of adequate reason to ? I know how he feels, I've wanted for ages to find an excuse to use ATL at work, but I've never found a compelling reason to do so and so haven't. So I did it in my own time. That's all I am advocating. I'll look forward to your article though, my book should arrive this week, and my latest DB should be finished, so I'll be allocating some of my spare time to some C#. Christian After all, there's nothing wrong with an elite as long as I'm allowed to be part of it!! - Mike Burston Oct 23, 2001
I think the question here is: will you "eat" your application ? If you'll depend on your application for surviving, don't take risks trying anything new until you have a working version. If it's just another application and is not critical for your bussiness, then you SHOULD try .NET, because it looks like more productive at a long term, specially in group programming, when most programmers simply do not understand when to use STL, ATL, MFC, and those 200 different string types. Furor fit laesa saepius patientia
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I can say with 100% qualification that developing an attractive, robust and usable GUI in C# using Visual Studio .NET (Beta 2 so far) is an almost wondrous experience. MS have put a lot of thought into the controls that come with VS.NET and using them is really easy. Naturally VS.NET will support a myriad of 3rd Party controls so you should have no fear there (you might need to research wether "old" controls will work in VS.NET though as I have not tested that yet). However if the only reason you are thinking about using C# is because it has cool UI features then you may be asking for trouble. Do you or any of your fellow developers know C#? Or do you have the time to learn a new language and a whole new "platform" (.NET) on which to code? If you have the time to learn C# then go for it, but if you are going to be learning as you go on the project and the project is a complex app then you could get in trouble. IMHO. If you do go C# please give us a report back on how it went, thanks. :) regards, Paul Watson Bluegrass Cape Town, South Africa "The greatest thing you will ever learn is to love, and be loved in return" - Moulin Rouge "In other words, the developer is dealing with an elephant, the accountant is dealing with a bunny rabbit." by Stan Shannon - 16/10/2001
but if you are going to be learning as you go on the project and the project is a complex app then you could get in trouble Hmmm, thats the way I have learned everything I know about programming. - Anders Money talks, but all mine ever says is "Goodbye!"
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but if you are going to be learning as you go on the project and the project is a complex app then you could get in trouble Hmmm, thats the way I have learned everything I know about programming. - Anders Money talks, but all mine ever says is "Goodbye!"
Same here but it is not an optimal method. Plus you are a bright guy with lots of experience. Paramedics don't learn on the job, nor do brain surgeons. Not even truck drivers learn on the job. Yes they learn tips and tricks of the trade but the fundamentals are all taught to them and they get a license or a degree at the end to qualify them. You don't say to your client "don't worry Bob, I will be learning C# as I go on your project. By the way should the heart monitor blink or wail when the patients heart stops beating?". ;) By all means learn new technologies on "demo" applications but learning a new tech on a real world client app is bad form and asking for trouble. regards, Paul Watson Bluegrass Cape Town, South Africa "The greatest thing you will ever learn is to love, and be loved in return" - Moulin Rouge "In other words, the developer is dealing with an elephant, the accountant is dealing with a bunny rabbit." by Stan Shannon - 16/10/2001
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Nothing smells like danger more than someone using something new, not because it will help, but because it won't hurt. Save your playing for playtime, and use proven tools unless C# gives you compelling reason to do otherwise. I will be shortly learning C# at home, but I wouldn't dream of using it at work unless a need came up and I felt it was *the* tool for the job. It's shiny newness and the need for my users to install the CLR would make me tend away from it unless the case was truly compelling. Christian After all, there's nothing wrong with an elite as long as I'm allowed to be part of it!! - Mike Burston Oct 23, 2001
Maybe, I should have been a bit more clear about this. I am not looking into .Net merely because it is cool. I do think that the environment is more productive (I have been learning c# for the past 6 months or so). My question is more on the lines of "Ok, I know that I will probably be more productive in C# than C++. But am I giving up something by moving away from MFC?" I have taken into account the following: 1) Most of asp.net appears to have been written in C#. The framework does appear quite stable. 2) Little change from Beta 2 to RC1 indicates maturity (to me) 3) Documentation seems pretty complete. 4) CLR distribution is not an issue for me since I have a closed audience that will be able to upgrade easily. But these issues worry me: 1) Not many third party tools. Maybe just a question of time. 2) Resources are few; gurus hard to come by :( 3) No source code for the framework. 4) Even if third party libraries become available will they give out source code? I really like having all the source code for my MFC apps (I use both Dundas and Stingray and have their source). Thanks, Suresh
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Same here but it is not an optimal method. Plus you are a bright guy with lots of experience. Paramedics don't learn on the job, nor do brain surgeons. Not even truck drivers learn on the job. Yes they learn tips and tricks of the trade but the fundamentals are all taught to them and they get a license or a degree at the end to qualify them. You don't say to your client "don't worry Bob, I will be learning C# as I go on your project. By the way should the heart monitor blink or wail when the patients heart stops beating?". ;) By all means learn new technologies on "demo" applications but learning a new tech on a real world client app is bad form and asking for trouble. regards, Paul Watson Bluegrass Cape Town, South Africa "The greatest thing you will ever learn is to love, and be loved in return" - Moulin Rouge "In other words, the developer is dealing with an elephant, the accountant is dealing with a bunny rabbit." by Stan Shannon - 16/10/2001
Paramedics don't learn on the job, nor do brain surgeons You told you that? I'm waiting for my first victim... er, pacient so I can practice what I learned in "Brain Surgery for Dummies". :-D I still think "Teach Yourself Brain Surgery in 21 Days" is better. :cool: Foot-and-Mouth disease is believed to be the first virus unable to spread through Microsoft Outlook
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Paramedics don't learn on the job, nor do brain surgeons You told you that? I'm waiting for my first victim... er, pacient so I can practice what I learned in "Brain Surgery for Dummies". :-D I still think "Teach Yourself Brain Surgery in 21 Days" is better. :cool: Foot-and-Mouth disease is believed to be the first virus unable to spread through Microsoft Outlook
I hope you got the revised 2001 edition of Brain Surgery for Dummies. My nureolegist friend said that it had typo on page 2005. Originally it said that the abdulah-oblong-gater was connected to the thigh bone. Obviously that is wrong! Naturally the abdulah-oblong-gater is attached to the abdulah-imabooby-towelheadinis. Don't forget it Eddie or you may have a lawsuit on your hands! Or bits of brain, whichever comes first. regards, Paul Watson Bluegrass Cape Town, South Africa "The greatest thing you will ever learn is to love, and be loved in return" - Moulin Rouge "In other words, the developer is dealing with an elephant, the accountant is dealing with a bunny rabbit." by Stan Shannon - 16/10/2001
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I hope you got the revised 2001 edition of Brain Surgery for Dummies. My nureolegist friend said that it had typo on page 2005. Originally it said that the abdulah-oblong-gater was connected to the thigh bone. Obviously that is wrong! Naturally the abdulah-oblong-gater is attached to the abdulah-imabooby-towelheadinis. Don't forget it Eddie or you may have a lawsuit on your hands! Or bits of brain, whichever comes first. regards, Paul Watson Bluegrass Cape Town, South Africa "The greatest thing you will ever learn is to love, and be loved in return" - Moulin Rouge "In other words, the developer is dealing with an elephant, the accountant is dealing with a bunny rabbit." by Stan Shannon - 16/10/2001
My nureolegist friend said that it had typo on page 2005 I don't care! I'm only up to page 300 but I feel confident that I can perform some beautiful carnage! :-D Or bits of brain, whichever comes first. Yummy! Clarice... Can you hear the Silence? The silence of the Lambs? :eek: Foot-and-Mouth disease is believed to be the first virus unable to spread through Microsoft Outlook
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I really don't think time at home allows you the time needed to really get to know a technology anyway; I don't think I felt comfortable using ATL until 100+ hours - and I'm not sure about you, but to clock up 100+ hours on the computer out of work time would be - Ummm... (well besides email time) about a year. But, when I am using a new technology at work I do tend to work longer hours. Now you might say that that is the equivalvent of working from home; but no I disagree because you need to have a consentrated burst of learning to get you to that 100+ hour mark. And of course, if after the 2 weeks or so of delving in you find that it doesn't do what you want, then you have to spend late night for the next couple of weeks in extra time making up for it. But if you don't take a risk, then you never get results. Obviously you evaluate your options (study peoples comments, read a few reviews) but then you do have to risk. It is what the the modern world is based on. (ie. put your money in the bank, low risk-low return, on the stock market, well...) Have fun, Paul Westcott.
I tend to put in a minimum 25 hours a week at home, in 4 hour bursts during the week, and a lengthy session on Saturday. Using a new technologoy for no other reason than that you want to is a stupid risk, it *is* better to make time in your own time to evaluate things and to use them when you know them sufficiently and when you have an actual reason to. Christian After all, there's nothing wrong with an elite as long as I'm allowed to be part of it!! - Mike Burston Oct 23, 2001
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I think the question here is: will you "eat" your application ? If you'll depend on your application for surviving, don't take risks trying anything new until you have a working version. If it's just another application and is not critical for your bussiness, then you SHOULD try .NET, because it looks like more productive at a long term, specially in group programming, when most programmers simply do not understand when to use STL, ATL, MFC, and those 200 different string types. Furor fit laesa saepius patientia
You're saying that most programmers are too stupid to know when to use STL ( whenever you need a container class as far as I am concerned ), ATL, STL and string types, but adding another choice into the mix will make that decision *easier* ? Or you're one of those who just want to dump all the proven technologies in one go and use C# regardless, so you don't *have* to think about what the best technology for a given application is anymore ? Christian After all, there's nothing wrong with an elite as long as I'm allowed to be part of it!! - Mike Burston Oct 23, 2001
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but if you are going to be learning as you go on the project and the project is a complex app then you could get in trouble Hmmm, thats the way I have learned everything I know about programming. - Anders Money talks, but all mine ever says is "Goodbye!"
Absolutely, but while I *have* done it at work, it's much nicer to throw oneself off the deep end at home than in a work scenario. As I keep saying on this thread, build the skills at home, then use them at work. Sure, I learn stuff at work too, but not sweeping things like 'here's a new language, let's use it for this project'. Christian After all, there's nothing wrong with an elite as long as I'm allowed to be part of it!! - Mike Burston Oct 23, 2001
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Maybe, I should have been a bit more clear about this. I am not looking into .Net merely because it is cool. I do think that the environment is more productive (I have been learning c# for the past 6 months or so). My question is more on the lines of "Ok, I know that I will probably be more productive in C# than C++. But am I giving up something by moving away from MFC?" I have taken into account the following: 1) Most of asp.net appears to have been written in C#. The framework does appear quite stable. 2) Little change from Beta 2 to RC1 indicates maturity (to me) 3) Documentation seems pretty complete. 4) CLR distribution is not an issue for me since I have a closed audience that will be able to upgrade easily. But these issues worry me: 1) Not many third party tools. Maybe just a question of time. 2) Resources are few; gurus hard to come by :( 3) No source code for the framework. 4) Even if third party libraries become available will they give out source code? I really like having all the source code for my MFC apps (I use both Dundas and Stingray and have their source). Thanks, Suresh
If you've been using it yourself for six months then I have misread your original post entirely and I apologise. You seem to have taken exactly the approach I am advocating. Christian After all, there's nothing wrong with an elite as long as I'm allowed to be part of it!! - Mike Burston Oct 23, 2001
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Absolutely, but while I *have* done it at work, it's much nicer to throw oneself off the deep end at home than in a work scenario. As I keep saying on this thread, build the skills at home, then use them at work. Sure, I learn stuff at work too, but not sweeping things like 'here's a new language, let's use it for this project'. Christian After all, there's nothing wrong with an elite as long as I'm allowed to be part of it!! - Mike Burston Oct 23, 2001
I also use to start up with new stuff at home, but I does it with an application I need, not just a test one... I hate writing stuffthat I can't use for for anything, I feel it's a waste of time. - Anders Money talks, but all mine ever says is "Goodbye!"
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I also use to start up with new stuff at home, but I does it with an application I need, not just a test one... I hate writing stuffthat I can't use for for anything, I feel it's a waste of time. - Anders Money talks, but all mine ever says is "Goodbye!"
I know what you mean, that's why it took me a year to learn ATL, it took a year before I thought of a program I could use for which a COM object was a logical way of doing it. Christian After all, there's nothing wrong with an elite as long as I'm allowed to be part of it!! - Mike Burston Oct 23, 2001
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You're saying that most programmers are too stupid to know when to use STL ( whenever you need a container class as far as I am concerned ), ATL, STL and string types, but adding another choice into the mix will make that decision *easier* ? Or you're one of those who just want to dump all the proven technologies in one go and use C# regardless, so you don't *have* to think about what the best technology for a given application is anymore ? Christian After all, there's nothing wrong with an elite as long as I'm allowed to be part of it!! - Mike Burston Oct 23, 2001
You're saying that most programmers are too stupid to know when to use STL Unfortunately, there are lots of stupid programmers. That's why VB exists. That's why Clipper existed. I live in Brazil, and here, I know about very few programmers using C++ correctly. Most of them, doing academic work. In fact, I belive that Java and C# (and it seems - god forgives me - even VB.NET) are two tools for the not-so-smart and not-so-stupid programmers. For some tasks, you just don't want to think about the best technology, performance, maintenance, OOP, clean and elegant design, and so on: haven't you made a .BAT, a .AWK or a makefile to automate something ? I have some handy batch files that together saves me lots of time. Even a smarter homepage in your browser can do this. Made in VBScript. And when I do this kind of work, I you don't *have* to think about the best techonology. Well, there are some people that do this king of programming. These people do with VB and Clipper the same kind of thing that we do with batches. Not that I like it, but I think of C# and Java as midrange programming languages, where you can make quick and still elegant programming. About the "want to dump all the proven technologies", that's why we do not use punch cards and COBOL anymore. Nor we use DAO and RDO. Furor fit laesa saepius patientia
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You're saying that most programmers are too stupid to know when to use STL Unfortunately, there are lots of stupid programmers. That's why VB exists. That's why Clipper existed. I live in Brazil, and here, I know about very few programmers using C++ correctly. Most of them, doing academic work. In fact, I belive that Java and C# (and it seems - god forgives me - even VB.NET) are two tools for the not-so-smart and not-so-stupid programmers. For some tasks, you just don't want to think about the best technology, performance, maintenance, OOP, clean and elegant design, and so on: haven't you made a .BAT, a .AWK or a makefile to automate something ? I have some handy batch files that together saves me lots of time. Even a smarter homepage in your browser can do this. Made in VBScript. And when I do this kind of work, I you don't *have* to think about the best techonology. Well, there are some people that do this king of programming. These people do with VB and Clipper the same kind of thing that we do with batches. Not that I like it, but I think of C# and Java as midrange programming languages, where you can make quick and still elegant programming. About the "want to dump all the proven technologies", that's why we do not use punch cards and COBOL anymore. Nor we use DAO and RDO. Furor fit laesa saepius patientia
Unfortunately, there are lots of stupid programmers. That's why VB exists. Bwhaahahaahhaahaaa - now this is more like it. That's why Clipper existed. I live in Brazil, and here, I know about very few programmers using C++ correctly. Most of them, doing academic work. You're probably right, and that is one reason that C# exists, to protect monkeys from themselves. In fact, I belive that Java and C# (and it seems - god forgives me - even VB.NET) are two tools for the not-so-smart and not-so-stupid programmers. For some tasks, you just don't want to think about the best technology, performance, maintenance, OOP, clean and elegant design, and so on: haven't you made a .BAT, a .AWK or a makefile to automate something ? Actually I create shell extensions to automate things, but not so much bat files. I'm not sure the example follows through. I have some handy batch files that together saves me lots of time. Even a smarter homepage in your browser can do this. Made in VBScript. And when I do this kind of work, I you don't *have* to think about the best techonology. Well, there are some people that do this king of programming. These people do with VB and Clipper the same kind of thing that we do with batches. Not that I like it, but I think of C# and Java as midrange programming languages, where you can make quick and still elegant programming. Possibly. I'm not anti C# per se, I am anti the idea that people migrate to it holus bolus instead of seeing it as another tool with limited usefulness. About the "want to dump all the proven technologies", that's why we do not use punch cards and COBOL anymore. Nor we use DAO and RDO. The point is we dump things when something *better* comes, not something *new*. Java was supposed to kill C++ development, and now so is C#. Java remains as a useful tool for those who use it, and C# will do the same. I don't think C# will have much more success than Java, and any it does will only be because the average Sun zealot probably is less easily led than the average Microsoft flunky. FWIW we've established the person who asked the question has used C# for six months already and is just now using it at work, for an internal product. I think under those circumstances he is not behaving unwisely, an internal product gives far more control over issues that might arise, we used GDI+ in prerelease for an internal product, so I can hardly talk. ;) I am also keen to play with C#, and will probably end up followin