Designing forms in silverlight is a PAIN.
The grid does make it easy to align stuff right or left, but when you start building more complex forms, It quickly becomes a hell.
(Think multicolumns forms, separating parts of the form in sub-usercontrol, with Localized labels so that you need the label column to be set to Auto...)
One particular problem I face is when I need to insert a new row in a form.
Is there any way to select all the
controls on multiple lines and move
them all 1 row down?
Right now, I have to go through every line and move them down, one by one.
How do you effectively build complex forms? I know about the DataForm control from the toolkit, but it is in "preview" quality and from what I have read, it is too inflexible when you need to customize and build multiple-columns forms.
Yes, complex Grid's can be annoying to change. Here are a few thoughts and ideas for you.
If you use Expression Blend and insert the Row or Column using the Blue Bars in the Artboard, Blend will attempt to do this for you. It works with varying degrees of success, largely based on the amount of the control the new row or column snap lines overlaps. For the best results, zoom into the Artboard and add the new snap line very close to the row above or column to the left.
At this point you'll still have a lot of cleanup to do, but the Grid.Row and Grid.Column properties will be correctly adjusted. Correcting the row and column sizes is one of the few times I choose to manually edit the XAML, so you'll probably be faster fixing those values manually.
If odd Margins are created (as they often are) you can select all the affected properties at once and reset the Margins en masse.
Probably the best advice would be to consider using a different control. If you find yourself constantly rearranging the contents of a Grid, perhaps you would be better off with a DockPanel. You can achieve a Grid-like result by adding elements (Grids) docked to the Top and binding the row or column height's to a Resource:
<UserControl.Resources>
<GridLength x:Key="StandardColumnHeight">32</GridLength>
</UserControl.Resources>
Now you can bind the ColumnDefinition Width to the static resource ensuring they all have the same width (of course this could also work with column widths).
<ColumnDefinition Width="{StaticResource StandardColumnHeight}"/>
If you define each of the subsequent Grid's using the same set of ColumnDefinitions (another quick XAML copy-n-paste job).
This may be a little extra work to set up initially, but inserting a new row in your DockPanel is a simple matter of XAML order and would not require as much work.
Related
I'm designing a form layout in FileMaker, and I'm spending a ton of time just trying to get all the controls in the right spot. Is there some way of doing a table layout? I just want to say "this control is in this cell" and let the table take care of all the formatting. Instead of having to set the position on each object just right.
What I Have
A form with a bunch of fields, organized in a table manner, i.e., rows and columns.
Example:
What I Want
To not have to specify the exact position of each individual control. Every time one element moves or needs to resize, it ends up screwing up the entire row, column, or "table", and I end up needing to move every field individually accordingly.
Is there a better way to organize fields in a form like this so that I don't have to manipulate the position and width of every "cell" in a row or column individually?
I think this is made easier with the use of the Inspector in layout mode. In particular, the controls in the "Arrange & Align" section on the "Position" tab of the inspector.
For example, you can quickly select all fields on the same "row" and align them to the top and make them the same height and width as needed.
If you are using FM 13, you may also want to make use of styles to make it easier to set the same formatting quickly across similar objects.
If you're a web developer you might want to experiment using the WebViewer. You can use Javascript for creating a nice table. Then you can interact with that table through calling a script in FileMaker.
Or just stick to a portal like Michael.Hor recommended.
Hi Experts,
Is there any way to automatically grow the content of dynamic text
field in crystal report. I will give you an example this way.
I have values to display in crystal report as (which we fetch dynamically fromt the database)
Employee_ID, Employee_name, Employee_address
Now, the Employee_ID, Employee_name would be ok. But for
Employee_address the value can be anything from the database, i.e. it
can be lengthy also(like with 80 charectors also). That is it will come in next row and
overlap the below the row column ('address') value.
Now, is there any way(or formula), when one dynamic text field grows
like address, then previous two Employee_ID and Employee_address
should grow automatically and for next row the data should not overlap
also.
Please give ideas.
Thanks in advance.
If you mark the three fields can grow, then each field will expand (vertically) as necessary to accommodate the data. If the field does NOT need to expand, it won't. Moreover, if the three fields are arranged side-by-side in the same details section, there will be no overlap--either horizontally or vertically.
If you are trying to always bottom-align the three fields, regards of the vertical size of any of the fields (the address field in your example seems to be the issue), then you have a different problem:
Relative Positions
This option allows you to lock the relative position of a report object next to a grid object within a section. For example, if you place a text object one centimeter to the right of a cross-tab object, during report generation the program will push the text object to the right, so that the one centimeter space is maintained regardless of the width of the cross-tab object.
Note:
Only horizontal locking is possible. If you need to preserve relative vertical positioning, you should create a new report section.
Once Relative Positions is selected for a section, you can no longer drag objects to new positions within that section. To change an object's position, use the Object Size and Position dialog box.
Relative positioning applies only to objects placed to the right of grid objects (that is, objects that can grow horizontally).
I'm working on a report which displays a configuration for a product, which depending on the product choosen has specific properties. I thought it would be handy to have one rectangle with a table on the left (tblDetailsB) and one on the right side of the report (tblDetailsA) (don't mind the order of A and B here...).
Under the rectangle I have another table which shows a list of drawers (if they're part of the configuration), this list comes from another dataset.
My problem is the size of the rectangle which holds tblDetailA and tlbDetailB is fixed (that's usually why one chooses a rectangle to hold..) and my tlbLade subreport for the drawers is under a lot of whitespace..
I could use subreports for tblDetailsA and tblDetailsB but I don't want to have too many of them..
I got myself into this mess, maybe someone knows a much better idea to solve this?
Thanks to http://www.sqldev.org/sql-server-reporting-services/hidden-rows-still-displayed-9660.shtml
I found out I have to suppress / hide the rows in the static row group under the details group (switch to advanced mode first..).
When I did that the size of the Rectangle (container) was ignored when the rows where hidden :)
Regards,
Mike
I am trying to create a report in SSRS using Report Builder 3.0 where there is an ungrouped section of data (in the screenshot this is called "Risks") followed by a grouped section of data "Controls". There can be many controls to one risk row as seen in the row with the "Ref" 3a. After the grouped set of controls it goes back to the ungrouped risk info (see below).
screenshot
I have made this work by using a nested table inside one of the cells, this all looked fine until I added a larger amount of data in the cell "Consequences". As you can see this does not look good at the moment as the inner table does not grow.
My question, is there a way to make the inner table grow, so the 2nd row text would be in the middle of that row and the background colour would take up the whole row, so it does not leave a white space?
I really appreciate any help you can give.
Thanks,
Glenn
I do not believe this to be possible as the nested tablix is by its own right optimised for space and visual appearance.
I know what you want to do and I can only suggest you tweak yourn report to query this data in one and produce one tablix. Not ideal I know as this will mess the arrangement.
I'm new to iPhone development and don't know what the best iPhone UI approach for my problem is. That's where I was hoping you all could provide some input and guidance.
Here's the system & how it's currently used:
Right now, I have an Excel spreadsheet of data with four columns - Make, Model, Size, Value. There are about 1,000 rows of data. How the system is used in Excel is to use Filtering on the columns. First, you select the Make from the filtered column (there are about 8 unique Makes), then select a Model (each Make has between 1 and 20 unique Models), then select the Size (each Model has about 20 unique Sizes), then use the associated Value.
If I were to create an HTML page and jQuery with AJAX, I'd have three SELECT elements and one DIV (or some kind of label). When a Make is selected, populate the Models SELECT. Likewise, when a Model is selected, populate the Size SELECT. Finally, when a Size is selected, display the associated Value in the DIV. (Note, that when a Make is selected, I'd need to clear out the Value DIV and the Size SELECT in addition to the population of the Model SELECT. - appropriate action for selecting Size as well)
Now, given that, what do you recommend as a UI pattern for the iPhone?
You could do exactly that you describe for the HTML version, using a UIPickerView in each place where you would use and HTML SELECT. (The UIPickerView uses the "spinning wheel" metaphor to select from a list of values).
You could also use a single multi-component UIPickerView, where the first wheel is Make, the second Model, and the third Size. That works best if the names are short enough that you can fit all three (Make/Model/Size) in a single row on the screen.