Menu System Advice

[Phill]

I've got a text based system currently opperating via telnet sessions
that I'm thinking of doing graphically w/.Net but am not sure If I can
reproduce the same benefits in Windows.

Basically it consists of a hierarchy of simple menus screens. Each
menu screen has a list of database programs that can be run by
choosing the program or pressing its #. The programs/sub menus listed
depends on who logged in (some people have access to only certain
areas)

When a program or sub menu is chosen it runs an when it fishishes it
returns to the calling menu.

Can something like this or better be done w/ .NET?

So far I've only thought of 2 ideas but they seem flawed:

1. A Web based menu system that displays the menu items as links to
..Net programs. [Seems slow and its hard for the web page to pass login
info to the lauched programs]

2. One large .Net program w/ containing the menus and code for all the
programs.
[Not practical]



I'm also dissapointed by how long it takes for a .Net program to show
up. It takes several seconds.

I'd like to use .Net though because it is nice to code for and
simplifies a lot of tasks.

Any ideas on how to make this work? Is windows not a good choice for
this? Or is there a totally better way to organize it?

I'd really appreciate any suggestions or advice, thanks.

 

[Nicholas Paldino [.NET/C# MVP]]

Phill,

I think that any programming language that will make it easy to make a
graphical user interface over a text based interface is a step in the right
direction.

Any language can do this really. The issue you are having is creating a
user interface that can manage all of this correctly. Right now, I'm
thinking that either having nested menus, or having a tree structure would
be a good idea (with the tree structure, you can select a node, have a tool
tip get a description, etc, etc).

As for .NET taking too much time to load up, there are quite a few
things going on before your program is even run. However, for the trade off
that you get, I think that it is worth it, IMO.

 

[Phill]

Well a tree control makes sense for the menus but a large # of
programs will be launched from this menu. I'm not sure it makes sense
to have one app that consists of a single tree control, or an app that
exists only of a menu bar because the programs that get chosen will be
independant apps. They won't exist w/ in the parent window that
launched them. Unless you know of a way to launch another .NET app as
a child of the launching program.

There will be many 40 or so various database apps in total. It's not
practical to join them into one large super app. But they do all need
to be able to be lauched from a central menu-type place. It's a little
awkward, I've never seen a Windows based system that worked like this.
Usually just stand-alone apps so I have trouble visualizing how best
to work it out.

Thanks for your input.