How would one create fancy UIs in .NET, with glossy buttons and smooth animations? You can point me to 3rd party frameworks, but I would like to understand the technical details also.
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A:
There's a free toolkit called Krypton ToolKit that has some nice glossy controls.
I hope somebody else posts about where to find out about the actual technical details, as I don't usually go that deep into that sort of code.
WPF is supposed to eventually replace Winforms. Some of what you learn with WPF is transferable to Silverlight as well.
hectorsosajr
2008-11-08 04:11:52
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A:
I find .NET to be overkill for a lot of those things, especially for AJAX stuff. I'd learn to use jQuery or even go directly to the Prototype library (check out scriptaculous).
As far as glossy buttons, get a great designer. If it's a pet project, you can find some great photoshop tutorials out there. But, if it's a real deal project for a client, sink some money into a rockstar designer. It'll make your life that much easier.
Jon Smock
2008-11-08 04:43:21
+1
A:
Or, even better, don't use a non-standard GUI toolkit or methodology. If there is something I can't stand in software is the over use of skinning and styles to make things look better that the cost of usability.
I agree with this to some extent, but I've seen examples of non-standard GUIs that was really used to improve the user experience.
Martin Cote
2008-11-08 15:08:14