CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#.netwinforms
user366312
user366312

Reputation: 16894

Web like Desktop GUI in C# winforms

How can I program a web like GUI for my Winforms Desktop Application?

For example, Visual Studio 2008 Start Page.

Upvotes: 4

Views: 3374

Answers (5)

Dale
Dale

Reputation: 13014

Could you clarify what you mean by 'web like' JMSA? Do you mean including HTML? If so, a WebBrowser control is what you want. If you mean like clean lines, rich dialogs, gradients, fancy buttons, all that "web 2.0" interface type stuff, you should probably explore WPF instead, it can do all that and more.

The VS2008 start page is basically just an iexplore browser window reading some html (generated from xml) locally and combining that with some RSS content.

How the Start Page Works

The Start Page is displayed in the Web browser that is available within the IDE. It consists of a client-side .htm page, in this case default.htm, which contains a list of tabs. These tabs are based on locally stored tab definition files that are authored using XML. When you select a tab, Visual Studio reads the related tab definition file for the tab. If a feed is included in the tab definition file, then the content for the tab is downloaded from a server, as specified in the tab definition file. If the file does not contain a feed, static content is displayed as specified in the tab definition file. See Figure 1 below.

from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa290347%28VS.71%29.aspx

Upvotes: 1

Christian Hayter
Christian Hayter

Reputation: 31071

Options:

  • Use the FlowLayoutPanel and TableLayoutPanel controls to lay out normal WinForm controls in a web-like style.
  • Use the WebBrowser control to embed HTML bits in your WinForm.
  • Use the ElementHost control to embed WPF bits in your WinForm.
  • Use WPF instead of WinForms for the whole UI.

Upvotes: 5

George Stocker
George Stocker

Reputation: 57872

You can use the WebBrowser Control.

Here are a few resources to get you started:

Upvotes: 2

user1228
user1228

Reputation:

Web-like can mean lots of different things. But when I think of web-like and windows forms I think WPF. Its much easier to create that start page using WPF than windows forms, whose look and feel are pretty much static and boring.

Upvotes: 0

Brian Genisio
Brian Genisio

Reputation: 48127

You would want to include a browser in your application. There is a user control called WebBrowser that will do this for you.

Upvotes: 5

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