Making first windows store app and need to have some controls show up at the top and bottom of every screen. When I did some WPF dev, I created a usercontrol and added it to every page. How is this done in windows store apps?
More specifically the header has a company logo and a status icon that changes based on an external resource (idle -> running, etc). The footer is where navigation happens in a somewhat linear fashion. Also, the footer displays the date and current time that continues to update. with the content in the middle changing based on what is selected in the footer.
There are a couple of different ways to do this. It really matters on whether you need it to be the same control (same instance) or if it is just a header/footer control which is added to each page and changes based on what you put into it.
Firstly, if this is something that can be incorporated into a CommandBar, that's the first thing I suggest you try. Then you can just create a StaticResource for each CommandBar, styled in the way you want for the header and footer. When you declare each page, in the root declaration, just set:
Page.TopAppBar="{StaticResource MyHeader}"
Page.BottomAppBar="{StaticResource MyFooter}"
You can make them Sticky and style them in any way that you would prefer, including having a collapsed version with just an ellipsis (...) to hide/show it. You can store all of the data for them inside of their own ViewModels, and have the control's DataContext just bind directly to the VM so that each instantiation pulls from the same data.
If it's not something that can be incorporated into a type of CommandBar, then I suggest you create your own Page subclass. The Template for it will wrap its ContentPresenter in your custom Header and Footer objects, likely in a Grid panel. This way will create a new copy of them each time, so they'll still need to bind to a ViewModel.
The final option that I see is to create a parent Page which has, similar to the subclass method, your header and footer wrapping the content. This time though, have them wrap a Frame. Then, all you have to do is call Frame.Navigate on that Frameand the header/footer controls will not be recreated, only the content in between them.
You can see something similar to this done in most of the Windows 8/8.1 app samples. They create a Content Frame, then navigate that through each page of the sample, generally on a selection from a navigation ListBox.
If you add a bit more information, I can try and tailor the answer a bit and provide some more specificity, but these are the general ways that I can see for you to accomplish what you have described.
Update:
Based on what you've said, to me it seems like the easiest thing to do would be to go with the third option, a Page wrapping a Frame. I suggest this because then it makes it quite easy for the bottom bar to affect navigation, and it sounds like you don't want the header or footer to be affected by page transitions.
If you check out the official ListView sample, you'll note their main page is declared something like this:
<Page
...>
<Grid Background="{ThemeResource ApplicationPageBackgroundThemeBrush}">
<!-- Navigation and other stuff -->
<Frame Grid.Column="1" x:Name="ScenarioFrame" Margin="30,50,30,0" />
</Grid>
</Page>
This is your basic main page declaration. You can then declare three Rows, one for your header, one for your Content, and one for your footer. If you want the footer to pop in and out, you can totally build the footer you have described into a CommandBar and include it on this page. Whenever you need to Navigate, just call ScenarioFrame.Navigate from your code-behind. You can now create Pages like normal, and Navigate to them like you would any other app.
This should also be 'Universal', so you should be able to include it in a Universal app, so long as you make sure your footer scales to the size of the screen (which you should already do). If you do try this, make sure that your navigation code in your main page is as generic as possible and the majority of the 'specialty navigation', such as Panes and settings are handled each platform-specific page, or at least via messaging (such as that provided by MvvmLight) and a NavigationHelper class.
Hope this helps and happy coding!
Related
I am new to cross platform development using Xamarin and currently I'm into the "trial and error"-phase.
I want to create my own drawer menu, that goes from bottom and upwards on slide. The menu will have different stop stages since the buttons (navigations) will be grouped by some logical things such as "Favorites", "Frequently used" etc. where each row (group) will contain the buttons.
Is it possible to create a "master page" with a header and also the footer which is the drawer?
I stumbled upon the ControlTemplate, however to me that only seem to be a master layout that can be used in pages to get the same look-and-feel without redundant style coding. As per Xamarin documentation
Control templates provide a clean separation between the appearance of a page and its content, enabling the creation of pages that can easily be themed.
But I need to add some behavior to it such as the sliding animation etc. and I would really not like to add a container in each xaml-file that I place the drawer menu in within each xaml.cs file.
Is there a good way of achieving something like this?
All help is appreciated.
The Slide Over Kit may help. It is a free plug in that allows you to create slide in panels from any direction.
https://github.com/XAM-Consulting/SlideOverKit
I'm writing a codenameone application where I want to have an image displayed across the top of the screen as a header. I do not want to include this image in every form/container that I create so therefore I came up with the following solution:
I have a Main form which contains the image (North) and a container (Center) which will then hold all the components of the specific screen that I want to show.
I will then create containers that represent each individual screen. My idea was to add these containers to the container of the main form, one by one and that navigation between them would be handled by changing the contents of that main screen container.
But I cannot find out how to make this work. As long as I have one single screen to show it is easy... The main form container can be an embedded container that is set to show the container for the single screen. But when I try to navigate to another I cannot make it work.
So, is there another approach I should use?
If not, how should I handle navigation between screens?
Is this with a GUI builder app or with a handcoded app?
Either way a simple way of customizing this if your app has a side menu or Toolbar would be to customize the TitleArea UIID to include your background image. E.g. start with a modern theme like the Business Theme and in the designer theme change the title area border property to be "Empty".
Then define the background image to be the image you want with "scaled to fit" or "aligned bottom" depending on what you want. Make sure to include enough space in the image for the title are and use a multi image so it will adapt for other OS's.
To share a common display layout in a Split template Windows Store app, I put a Back button, title TextBlock, and another button in a UserControl, and then use that control in most of my pages. My problem is that in the main page, neither of the buttons will react to pointer activity, be it pointer over or clicking. However, it works fine in any other page. To isolate it, I created a blank app and duplicated the UserControl, but it works in that case.
How can I debug this?
Thanks.
-John
In an "ItemView" page of a "Split" template app, the Grid containing the back button and title must be below the GridView and ListView in the XAML code. Apparently the GridView, with no Grid.Row, and a Grid.RowSpan="2" needs to overlay the first and second rows, and if the button is beneath the GridView, it must assume it is not visible and doesn't need to respond to events. I moved my new user control instance to below the GridView, and the buttons work now.
This whole scheme of overlaying both rows makes no sense to me, but without the Grid.RowSpan="2", the items don't split nicely into two rows for me. I think such odd layout should have a comment explaining it in the template. Perhaps it could save someone else from this same kind of issue.
I need to implement a page where I display items related to locations.
The user should be able to switch between viewing locations in a list and viewing the locations in the map control (as pointpoints).
A similar idea to this picture from iOS:
I wanted this in a panorama but it won't work if the map is interactive.
So this forces me to have a search button somewhere which will open this page.
But it's not what I would like to do.
I want to show users nearby items easily, without the need for them to navigate to a separate page.
I tried to look for existing apps, the built-in app, Local Scout puts the map at the top above the panorama. But I cannot do this in my case.
What's the recommended way of implementing switching between a List and Map views similar to what I described above, in a panorama?
The only idea I have is that when user chooses the see issues on the map open a separate page with the map. Switching back, I need to navigate back to the panorama and make sure it is scrolled to the panorama item (something which as far as I seen is not easily done).
If you are only going to have two items in your Panorama, I would actually suggest a Pivot page. This would fall more in line with the design standards of Windows Phone.
You could place the map on the panorama but have a transparent button over it. This would allow users to see what is actually on the map and when clicked, open to a new page that is now interactive. This could be a nice way to implement it.
Something like this, perhaps?
<Button VerticalAlignment="Top" Click="Map_Click" Height="560" BorderThickness="0">
<Grid>
<maps:Map IsEnabled="False" LandmarksEnabled="True" Name="MapControlEvent" ZoomLevel="15" Width="427" Height="877">
</maps:Map>
</Grid>
First up, I wouldn't use a Panorama or Pivot on this example, but switch visibility when pressing the button of the Map and the List. In other words, only have one page with both on them.
But if you do want to use something else... I would also suggest the Pivot control and take a look at the new Windows Phone Toolkit for Windows Phone 8!
Example here...
Because you want to use the LockablePivot when the map is displayed, otherwise the user will not understand the difference between the swipe interaction on the map and the switching swipe to the other pivot item.
I am developing a windows 8 app using JavaScript & HTML.
I have a page which has different sections laid horizontally. I have links for these sections in another page. I want the page to load from that specific section (meaning page should start from this section).
I am using a grid template and have a listview in the main page. When i click on any item in a group ,navigate to that page and come back to the main page. I want the main screen to load from the section that i have selected before.The screen should automatically scroll to that section like how it is happening from semantic zoom.
Any help in this regard will be of great use.
Thanks
For the first part, it should be enough to set the scrollLeft property of the container to the offsetLeft property of the element you want to scroll to.
The second part can be achieved by storing the scrollPosition attribute of the ListView before navigating away and setting it to its old value after navigating back.
As Ma_li said, scroll-left is one solution -- especially for non ListView content. The key here is how much of the experience you want to maintain when navigating back. One option (again, for non-listview content) is to find the element you want to be onscreen, and calling scrollIntoView on the element. However, this only brings the item on screen -- it won't bring it all the way to the left (or right, for BIDI languages), it scrolls just enough to et the whole element on screen.
For ListViews, you should use the indexOfFirstVisibleItem (or, indexOfLastVisibleItem) to scroll the listview to the correct location. This is key, because the listview is a virtualized control, this provides the most accurate & reliable method for scrolling the listview position.
Thanks Dominic & ma_il
I tried document.getElementBy("Id").focus() for the 1st Question and it worked. But i am getting a problem in this.
I have four divs Horizontally say "divA divB divC divD"
Data for the divA is coming from cloud. When i click on the link for divD in the main screen. it is not taking me to the corresponding section for the first time as it takes some time to load the divA. when click on the link for divD second time, it takes to the respective section. It is working if i use setInterval() but the DivA is shown for few seconds when the page loads and then scrolls to divD which is not good.