Not wanting to reinvent the UI wheel

[Ronald S. Cook]

We're looking to not reinvent the wheel in designing the UI for our
enterprise Windows app.

It's a pretty common scenarion... user clicks to view a list of customers.
User clicks on a customer and sees details of that customer which include a
list of accounts owned by the customer. User clicks on account to view
those details. User wants to go back, etc.

Can anyone recommend a "leading product" out there that we could investigate
and "borrow from" instead of reinventing the wheel? We're developers, not
UI design experts after all.

Thanks,
Ron

 

[Guest]

We're looking to not reinvent the wheel in designing the UI for our
enterprise Windows app.

It's a pretty common scenarion... user clicks to view a list of
customers. User clicks on a customer and sees details of that customer
which include a list of accounts owned by the customer. User clicks
on account to view those details. User wants to go back, etc.

Can anyone recommend a "leading product" out there that we could
investigate and "borrow from" instead of reinventing the wheel? We're
developers, not UI design experts after all.

The built in .NET GUI tools already contain a lot of the functionality you
need. Take a look at the DataGridView.


As far as I know, there aren't any GUI form generators that are decent.
Most only work with trival application and at some point you're going to
have to edit the code.

 

[Ronald S. Cook]

Sorry if I wasn't clear. I'm not looking for a GUI generator. Just to see
some screens and flow of an application that's already out there that is
similar to what we're trying to do. -thx

 

[Phill W.]

It's a pretty common scenario... user clicks to view a list of customers.
User clicks on a customer and sees details of that customer which include a
list of accounts owned by the customer. User clicks on account to view
those details. User wants to go back, etc.

Can anyone recommend a "leading product" out there that we could investigate
and "borrow from" instead of reinventing the wheel? We're developers, not
UI design experts after all.

I like Trees.

That sounded weird - let me rephrase that.

I like TreeViews, UserControls and classes that allow me to link them
together, something like this:

The Tree on the left lists Customers.
You click on a Customer node in the tree and their "record" appears on
the right. Their accounts may be added into the tree, as sub-nodes, at
this point.
Click on an Account node for this customer and their account "record"
appears on the right.

You get the idea.

To achieve this, you'll need to pull a few bits and pieces together,
including:

A "collection" of Customer records, from which you load the Tree.

Custom TreeNodes for Customers, Accounts etc.

To add, say, a Customer to the Tree, you ask the relevant Customer
Object for its custom TreeNode. This should come pre-formatted and can
be directly inserted into the Tree. It also has a property that points
back to the originating Customer object.

When the user clicks on the TreeNode, the Tree has to work out if its a
custom one and, if it is, go and get the editor it needs for the
right-hand side of the screen. I've done this through the "Customer"
class as well - custom TreeNode links back to Customer, which returns
the editor control via another property, all loaded up and ready to roll.

The Tree just loads the editor into a Frame (of course, it has to cope
if there's one there /already/).

It's not /quite/ that simple - you'll need a couple of Interfaces as
well, because this is a "plug-in" model and you need a "generic" way of
describing (a) any class from which you can /get/ an "editor" and (b)
the editor itself.

HTH,
Phill W.

 

[Ronald S. Cook]

Thanks Phil. I was hoping to find some applications similar to what we're
doing (in construct, not business of course... we're feeding cattle).