Visual Studio 2005 Gui

I went and downloaded the Express editions of Visual Studio 2005, and after playing around with them for about half an hour, I was quite impressed with them.

But, what I was particularly wondering, was how does the gui for Visual Studio actually work? What types of controls are you using to make those toolbars and side windows snap together like that (either splitting each other in half or combining into a set of tabs), and make those "snap-guide" things appear on the screen that highlight in blue exactly where the window is going to snap into place (that could probably be explained better, but I think you know what I mean).

Functionality similar to the VS2005 interface controls can be found on www.divelements.co.uk.

I really love the userinterface of VS2005 it not only looks great, but also works great with the docking and stuff like that.

www.dotnetmagic.com is also a great set of controls that mimics a variety of Microsoft-style UI's.  They also give you the source code (C#).

Highly recommend it.

Both of those look exactly what I want, but they are a tad pricey for this particular project I have in mind. Guess I'll just have to code up my own version then. Though it still makes me wonder what was actually used in Visual Studio, Microsoft might have licensed the use of these controls, but I have my serious doubts about that.

I suspect they wrote it themselves.

WillemM wrote:

Functionality similar to the VS2005 interface controls can be found on www.divelements.co.uk.

I really love the userinterface of VS2005 it not only looks great, but also works great with the docking and stuff like that.

Same with dotnetmagic, used to be free, but the author decided to charge.  I'm a single developer, and paid out the $399 out of my own money, in my mind, if you *really* need an app to look good, it's worth paying for.  Remember, before you go ahead and write your own, your time has a cost stapled to it, I imagine buying one reduces the risk and cost of your project.

andur wrote:

I went and downloaded the Express editions of Visual Studio 2005, and after playing around with them for about half an hour, I was quite impressed with them.

But, what I was particularly wondering, was how does the gui for Visual Studio actually work? What types of controls are you using to make those toolbars and side windows snap together like that (either splitting each other in half or combining into a set of tabs), and make those "snap-guide" things appear on the screen that highlight in blue exactly where the window is going to snap into place (that could probably be explained better, but I think you know what I mean).

I guess it depends on what you are developing. If you are playing around for fun, do it yourself, or just stick with the standard stuff.

If you are coding for profit, buy controls. They seem expensive but compare the cost to the amount of time and therefore money it would take you to do a fraction of what they do.

For the record we use the Infragistics Suite. Its pretty huge. Some of the object models are large and obtuse but once you have worked your way around them you can achieve pretty much anything with them..  Its a lot easier to customise an Infragistics control than it is to do a control from scratch.

Hey Andur,

I used to look at purchasing frameworks the same way.  However, say you're charging out $60 / hr.  If you spend over 6.5 hours builiding the control set (the entire set) then it will cost more for you to develop it than to just purchase the control set. 

I don't know anything about the financials regarding your project.   You may be charging less than $60 / hr but just wanted to point out that your time is still money.

Aloha,

James

FoxPacific wrote:

Hey Andur,

I used to look at purchasing frameworks the same way.  However, say you're charging out $60 / hr.  If you spend over 6.5 hours builiding the control set (the entire set) then it will cost more for you to develop it than to just purchase the control set. 

I don't know anything about the financials regarding your project.   You may be charging less than $60 / hr but just wanted to point out that your time is still money.

Aloha,

James

Check out this thread (free WinForms Controls): http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=134806

andur wrote:

FoxPacific wrote: Hey Andur, I used to look at purchasing frameworks the same way.  However, say you're charging out $60 / hr.  If you spend over 6.5 hours builiding the control set (the entire set) then it will cost more for you to develop it than to just purchase the control set.  I don't know anything about the financials regarding your project.   You may be charging less than $60 / hr but just wanted to point out that your time is still money. Aloha, James

Well, this isn't for a commercial product, so that does put a limited budget on it. Normally I'd agree with you for commercial software, but this oddly isn't the case this time. I also wouldn't mind learning more about how to create custom controls, and might as well do that by creating something useful for myself.