Menu Recommendation

[Ajay Kalra]

If you want to mimic DOS's look and feel (for whatever reason), the
question you have to ask is why are you porting this app to .Net?

 

[news.microsoft.com]

I am in the process of porting a program from DOS to VB.NET. I was given
the direction of recreating the feel and functionality of the menu system
from DOS. The system will not have access to a mouse so it will (read must)
all be done through Arrow/Enter keys. The way I'm planning to attack this
right now is to use Graphics.DrawString & Graphics.FillRectangle in the
Form.Paint method to duplicate the look and feel of the DOS menus. Anyone
have a better way to appoach this problem?

Chris

 

[Rachel Suddeth]

Does recreating the feel and functionality mean it has to look identical?
One might think it would just need to be organized and accessed in the same
way. Not knowing how it was organized, though, I wouldn't have
suggestions... just not sure if you have a specific need for the exact look
from what you said. If you want the menu functionality that you get from
..NET menu items, but just to have it look different, then the "manual"
drawing you suggest is probably the way to go.

Not having access to mouse does not mean that arrow/enter keys are the only
way. You can also have Alt + Character hot keys and Function keys shortcuts
and ctrl + key shortcuts. All of these can be easily done in the ordinary
menu functionality.

Hope this helps...
-Rachel

 

[Herfried K. Wagner [MVP]]

I am in the process of porting a program from DOS to VB.NET. I was given
the direction of recreating the feel and functionality of the menu system
from DOS. The system will not have access to a mouse so it will (read
must) all be done through Arrow/Enter keys. The way I'm planning to attack
this right now is to use Graphics.DrawString & Graphics.FillRectangle in
the Form.Paint method to duplicate the look and feel of the DOS menus.

I don't think that this is worth the effort. Windows Forms are intended for
creating Windows applications, not clones of DOS applications. Even Windows
menus provide full keyboard access over shortcuts and F10-{arrow keys,
accelerators}. I strongly suggest to use typical Windows menus.

 

[Cor Ligthert]

Chris,

What kind of Dos and what kind of menu's are you talking about.

I never saw any menu functionality in MS-Dos by instance, there all was/is
programmer build and/or done by the development tool that is/was used, which
even could be the standard texteditor and batch files.

A nice replacement for the way it often was done can be the treeview by the
way.

Cor

 

[Rob Nicholson]

If you want to mimic DOS's look and feel (for whatever reason), the

question you have to ask is why are you porting this app to .Net?

Because IT want zero footprint, no-rollout and centralised update of
applications and users want remote access.

But...

Increasingly, users are also wanting the functionality of traditional client
based applications which is a challenge, to say the least.

Cheers, Rob.

 

[Rob Nicholson]

Form.Paint method to duplicate the look and feel of the DOS menus. Anyone

have a better way to appoach this problem?

May I suggest you have a serious look at NetAdvantage 2005 Vol 1:

http://infragistics.com/

This set of controls includes a menu builder. Now whilst not beyond the witt
of man to roll-your-own, ~£500 (which is what a single developer license
costs) doesn't buy you much development time (day?). There is a bit of a
learning curve and NetAdvantage can be a bit slow as it does tend to
generate large HTML files to be delivered to the client but this is overcome
by the functionality.

Cheers, Rob.

 

[Rob Nicholson]

Form.Paint method to duplicate the look and feel of the DOS menus. Anyone

have a better way to appoach this problem?

And yes, I agree with others - trying to mimic a keyboard driven system in a
web app is kind of against the whole idea

But then again, one of key (ha!) advantages of our main VB6 client
application is that competent users can do an awful lot of form entry
without their hands leaving the keyboard. In a rapid-response (e.g. call
centre) application this is an important requirement. You'd be amazed how
much time is wasted moving your hand off the keyboard to use the mouse.

A competent keyboard user oozes efficiency I can open a new email, enter
recipient, check it, enter subject, email body, spell check and send all
without my hands leaving the keyboard. Some have said "a blur" <grin>

Rob.