Screen Configuration Mechanism ?

  • Thread starter Thread starter JezB
  • Start date Start date
J

JezB

Does anyone have any useful links or ideas on allowing end-user screen
configuration in .NET ?

What I am after is a mechanism that allows developers to create rich client
forms in some sppropriate "default" layout, but which then allows a
privileged user to manipulate the screen layout at run-time (to affect all
or selected users), ie. hiding particular panels, controls or grid columns,
changing the display and tab order of panels, controls (within panels) and
grid columns, etc.

I'm not sure how the configuration UI will actually work at present but I'm
open to suggestion.

The mechanism should incur minimal additional effort on the developer.
 
Here is some suggestion:

When run in "config" mode, you could do this:

1) Changing TabIndex of Controls to affect their Tab Order: When a Control
gets focus, popup a window beside it where the user can specify a new
TabIndex in a textbox. Save the changes the user made in that popup, if any.
Move the popup as the user selects different controls on the form.

2) Hiding Controls: You could use a similar approach as above, where the
user can specify whether or not a Control should be hidden in the popup
window. If you use "Docking Windows" like in VS.Net, then a docked control
can be easily hidden and the hidden state saved.

3) Grid Columns: This should be straight-forward. Just save the new
col-widths of the grid at the end of config mode.

Save all the changes in a config file and load the states from this config
file when run in normal mode.

Essential Tools from Syncfusion, lets you easily create a "Popup Window"
during design-time and show it during runtime. It also include an advanced
docking framework. We also provide a serialization framework to help you
persist states in easily and in a variety of forms, xml files, database,
Isolated Storage, etc. You might also be interested in Essential Grid:

http://www.syncfusion.com/Products/suite.aspx

Regards,
Praveen Ramesh
Syncfusioin, Inc.
www.syncfusion.com
 
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