What control could I use to show text in multiple columns? - microsoft-metro

I'm wondering what is the multicolumn text control used in "News App", in Windows 8:
I have seen this microsoft example where they use fixed RichTextBlock and RichTextBlockOverflow inside a grid. There must be a better way to do this (I hope). Do you know how?

Unfortunately that's the best way to do it, if you are creating your app in XAML. However, if you are creating creating your app using HTML5/JavaScript you can achieve this using CSS Overflow Properties.
There is a video from the BUILD conference 2012, showing how this is done:
Key technologies for building great reading experiences
- the overflow part begins after around 20 minutes.
Note: The video talks about the possibilities and limitations of both HTML5 and XAML, and shows how it's done.

Related

Images in Toast or Snackbar

I am building an application that targets Windows, Mac, IOS and Android.
I am using .NET Maui.
Is it possible to display an image or images in a toast or snackbar using the .Net Maui Community Toolkit? If so, can you provide an example please? if not, is there another way to achieve this.
I have looked at all the documentation I can find but have not been able to find a way
This is unfortunately not possible. A SnackBar/Toas control is designed to show a simple (text) message and at most 1 action that is associated with it. If you want to show images and such you will either have to implement something custom or maybe look at the Popup implementation in the Community Toolkit.

Web Addin Support in comparison with VSTO/COM based Extensions for PowerPoint

I am trying to build a Powerpoint Addin using the new JS-based stack that Microsoft has introduced. As part of the development, I am evaluating the support that the current JS libraries are providing. While VSTO/COM-based plugins have been around for quite some time, lack of cross-platform support is a challenge(especially for Mac and now Web), which is also the reason I want to opt for Web-based Addin(JS). But Powerpoint doesn't have a HOST API as Excel or Word does which makes things slightly challenging.
Thus here are the capabilities I want to have from the JS stack -
Ability to add and change the properties of shapes. While adding a shape doesn't have a specific API function, I was able to add it as an SVG object. Is there an easier way to change the properties of shapes and
Adding links to shapes to different slides.
Initiating other office apps like Excel and the ability to edit/read data from those instances.
Apply Slide Transitions.
Ability to connect other data resources through a URI.
Store state of shapes and slides.
It would be great if someone can point to the appropriate sections of the documentation which might help me find answers to this.
Most of what you are requesting cannot yet be done in a PowerPoint Web Add-in. But you can so some of it; for example, "connect to other data sources through a URI". I recommend that you look through the Develop section of the documentation.

Dynamic Chart using Xamarin Forms

I am newbie in Xamarin; I know there must be ready components for what I need, already I searched but not yet found.
I need to create a dynamic graphic like this:
http://www.highcharts.com/demo/dynamic-update
I wore this in PhoneGap (html5 + JS), but now I'm moving to Xamarin forms and would like to know if any third component is what I need or I'll have to do everything from scratch.
Thank you.
I'm currently looking into graphing too and OxyPlots seems to be a pretty good line graph tool. I don't think it supports dynamic updating so you'd have to program it to update manually when new data points come available.
I've not gotten round to actually using this myself but I thought I'd post this here in case it works for you.
Edit: Here's a list of examples. Also you can add it to your project using nuget so it should be easy to set up.
I'm using Syncfusion controls for Xamarin.Forms and I'm satisfied with it. They also have a free license for individual developers and small businesses.
For dynamically updated Xamarin charts SciChart offers an extremely high performance solution. With the SciChart Xamarin Chart control you can draw up to a million points, zoom, pan and scroll big datasets interactively.
Check out performance demos here:
https://www.scichart.com/example/xamarin-chart-realtime-fifo-scrolling-chart-example/
https://www.scichart.com/example/xamarin-chart-performance-demo-example/
https://www.scichart.com/example/xamarin-chart-ecg-monitor-demo-example/
Disclosure: I am the tech lead on the SciChart Xamarin project

UI Automation Verify v/s UISpy - The way they find UI elements

I am trying to automate UI interactions for a C++ MFC application. I tried to find elements' automation ID using UISpy and UIAVerify tools. I am on win2k3.
There is a tab control, the automation ID of which is visible to UISpy but not to UIAVerify.
The issue is - it is not visible even to the C# code that I write using Project White framework or ui automation framework of .net 3.0.
I want to get handle to this control the way UISpy gets it. Is there any way I can find out how UISpy does it?
Thanks!!!
UISpy is likely using Microsoft UI Automation under the covers. You can see how this works from this example*. There are all kinds of conditions on AutomationElement which you can use to locate them.
I've only worked with WPF tabs, but found it really, really hard to locate them by Automation Id. Instead I've been using the AutomationName property, with the title on the tab as the value. Not sure if White supports this, but I'm pretty sure you can get the original AutomationElement out and use it as per the example.
You'll also probably be looking for something supporting the SelectionItemPattern (there's a SelectionItemIsSupportedProperty), and you'll need to use the pattern to select the tab and make it active before you can see anything in it.
Please comment if you need any more info. It might help to know what the structure of your container with tabs in is.
*Declaration of interest since I wrote this.

How do I build a wiki into an iPhone app?

I want to build an iPhone app that is really a wrapper around a wiki. Specifically, I have some static reference content that can be represented by a hyperlinked set of pages and want to build an app that will provide a nice interface over this content, including search, bookmarking, and annotating. I'm wondering what the best approach is for building something like this.
(I'm spent a fair bit of time googling for answers but pretty much every combination of search terms I can think of returns links to wikis, not links about putting a wiki into an app).
Are there libraries out there for handling wiki content (rendering, navigating links etc.)? I imagine I could just represent my content as a set of local HTML pages and point the web browser control at these but that doesn't seem right. Any ideas on how best to approach this in the iOS world?
Thanks in advance!
Try looking at TWedit, it is a wrapper for the excellent TiddlyWiki which is a single file WIKI built around JavaScript and HTML. TW is very powerful and well supported with many plugins available.