My Hobby Project - Comicster | The Coffeehouse

mabster

Hi all,

I thought I would make a post to let people know about Comicster, a program I've been writing since an early CTP of Visual C# Express. I just released a version to run against the final .NET 2.0 framework.

It's a little freeware application to catalog a comic-book collection. There are plenty of comic-book collection-tracking programs out there, but very few free ones. I wrote this basically for myself, but others are getting use out of it, which is a good feeling. Smiley

It uses an ADO.NET strongly-typed DataSet, but it saves it compressed XML locally, rather than writing back to a database. The end-result is that users see this as just another file-based application.

What else? Hmm ... it uses an embedded WebBrowser control to display info using skins, which are made up of plain text files so you can create your own. It's deployed using ClickOnce, so it supports updates. It has a built-in sample database using an XML-file as an embedded resource.

The next big step I'm working on is an internet upload/download, so that users can create a shared database of comics based on items from their collection. I'm building the web-services with Visual Web Developer Express. That bit's not active in the downloadable version just yet.

If you're into comics, or if you are interested in seeing what's possible in C# Express (answer: pretty much everything), please take a look!

Here's the site again. Screenshots are included. Comicster

Cheers,
Matt

Steve411

Oooooh, right on!

Very neat.
- Steve

Manip

Nice GUI. Simple yet functional. Smiley

mabster

Thanks guys.

One other feature I should point out - the WebBrowser isn't just for looks. If you click on a character name in the cast of an issue, the program will jump to that character in the tree. Likewise for anything else in your collection.

Also, your skin can have "action" links, that look like this:

<a href="action:FileNew">Create a new file</a>

... and when the user clicks that link, it's exactly like clicking "File|New" in the menu.

I accomplished this by creating my own "ActionList" class (Delphi users will know what I'm talking about). Any time the WebBrowser detects that someone is navigating to a URL with an "action:" scheme, it intercepts the navigation and executes the action instead.

It even works with parameters. I can do this:

<a href="action:FileReopen?filename=c:\collection.cmx">Reopen my collection</a>

... and when I click on the link it will reopen "c:\collection.cmx". That's how I do a "recently used files" list in the welcome page of the skin.

W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

Nice work

Although I do have a few UI suggestions, if it helps:

In Windows, tabs are typically at the top of a "tabbable screen". Consider moving the "Browse" and "Search" tabs to the top of the side-panel
The text in the green bar has uneven padding, consider increasing the size of the green bar (but not the text)
Finally, provided you're opting for similar functionality in Office 2003, the help search box should have left-justified non-italic text, I feel it could also be slightly more feignt.

Keep it up, nontheless Smiley

mabster

W3bbo wrote:
Nice work

Although I do have a few UI suggestions, if it helps:

All suggestions are appreciated!

W3bbo wrote:
In Windows, tabs are typically at the top of a "tabbable screen". Consider moving the "Browse" and "Search" tabs to the top of the side-panel

Yeah, except my "search" panel has a tabcontrol of its own, and those tabs work much better at the top of the form. Two sets of nested tabs looked bad, so I opted to put the main ones at the bottom. Here's a screenshot.

W3bbo wrote:
The text in the green bar has uneven padding, consider increasing the size of the green bar (but not the text)

Which padding are you talking about here? The "My Collection" header? It's just an H1 tag being rendered by IE ... I don't think I've set a margin or padding on it. How is it uneven?

W3bbo wrote:
Finally, provided you're opting for similar functionality in Office 2003, the help search box should have left-justified non-italic text, I feel it could also be slightly more feignt.

Cool - so in Office 2003 they paint the "click here to search" as left-aligned, non-italic? The search box obviously returns to a standard textbox format when you click in it.

As for its colour, I've gone with SystemColors.DisabledText (or whatever it's called). I could definitely go lighter, but that one's theme-aware, which is nice.

W3bbo wrote:
Keep it up, nontheless

You know I will! Smiley

W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

mabster wrote:
Yeah, except my "search" panel has a tabcontrol of its own, and those tabs work much better at the top of the form. Two sets of nested tabs looked bad, so I opted to put the main ones at the bottom. Here's a screenshot.

Now that I look at it, perhaps a layout similar to Windows XP's search-sidebar might be better

(...Unless the "Text search" / "Special search" features are mutually-exclusive?)

mabster wrote:

W3bbo wrote:The text in the green bar has uneven padding, consider increasing the size of the green bar (but not the text)

Which padding are you talking about here? The "My Collection" header? It's just an H1 tag being rendered by IE ... I don't think I've set a margin or padding on it. How is it uneven?

Give the h1 a padding of between 0.25em and 0.5em and you'll see what I mean Smiley

mabster wrote:

W3bbo wrote:Finally, provided you're opting for similar functionality in Office 2003, the help search box should have left-justified non-italic text, I feel it could also be slightly more feignt.

Cool - so in Office 2003 they paint the "click here to search" as left-aligned, non-italic? The search box obviously returns to a standard textbox format when you click in it.

As for its colour, I've gone with SystemColors.DisabledText (or whatever it's called). I could definitely go lighter, but that one's theme-aware, which is nice.

I didn't mean to be rude or anything, but I was just pointing it out for the sake of consistency.

mabster

W3bbo wrote:
Now that I look at it, perhaps a layout similar to Windows XP's search-sidebar might be better

(...Unless the "Text search" / "Special search" features are mutually-exclusive?)

Yeah, they are. I couldn't think of a better way.

W3bbo wrote:
Give the h1 a padding of between 0.25em and 0.5em and you'll see what I mean

Ok, I'll try that when I'm next working on the skin. Ta!

W3bbo wrote:
I didn't mean to be rude or anything, but I was just pointing it out for the sake of consistency.

That's cool! I love any kind of feedback. I'll have a look at some Office 2003 screenshots and see if I can make it look better.

Thanks again!

cerkit
Just another programmer

I've got a problem. Seems like a difficult thing to fix on your side, but I was wondering if that makes any sense. In one issue of JSA, I've got the Flash from the past and the Flash from the future talking to each other. I've got them categorized under different storylines, but the app only lets me add one of them to the issue. Any thoughts?

RoyalSchrubber
One. How many time travellers does it take to change a lightbulb?

cerkit wrote:
I've got a problem. Seems like a difficult thing to fix on your side, but I was wondering if that makes any sense. In one issue of JSA, I've got the Flash from the past and the Flash from the future talking to each other. I've got them categorized under different storylines, but the app only lets me add one of them to the issue. Any thoughts?

The thread is from 2005 and it's likely that you'll not get response from the developer as I/we don't see him around Channel 9 anymore these days, but you can contact him on this site: http://www.madprops.org/cs/forums/12.aspx

Smiley