.NET news » GUI

While custom controls are introduced every day, not all of them are easily accessible.This article provides a quick summary of Microsoft® technologies that help make Win32-based custom controls programmatically accessible. Techniques range from implementing UI Automation, to creating or overriding properties with Dynamic Annotation, to using the new IAccessibleEx interface to close the gap between UI Automation and Microsoft Active Accessibility.

As is often the case, applications are not typically designed with accessibility in mind.Usually, applications are designed to satisfy business requirements. If those business requirements do not include accessibility, more likely than not, the application as a whole will be inaccessible to important segments of users. There are, however, steps you can take to mitigate this common lack of foresight in requirements analysis.

CueProvider is a lightweight class that lets you set a cue banner (the grey prompt text that automatically disappears when you begin to type) in a TextBox control.

Many beginners in the C# or VB.NET development category sometimes want to be able to apply themes or styles to their application. This rendering class allows you to easily customize the appearance of your C#/VB.NET applications. This was inspired by the Office2007Renderer, which enables you to apply a multitude of Office 2007 styles to an application. After I began using Office2007Renderer, I found that some of the drawing functions caused severe lag on my applications. So, I took it into my own hands to develop a new Office2007Renderer of my own. From there, it developed into a fully editable class.

Microsoft Excel has a very useful auto-filter function. With this function enabled on a column, the user is able to select filters from a drop-down list, which when selected, are applied to the column. This article describes how to add similar filter functionality to the WPF ListView control.

An article on numeric Up/Down control with some unique features useful for hardware control applications

This 'ToolStrip' extension automatically selects an image using the selected image size.

This article provides an approach to a Transparent Control that draws an ellipse with real transparent background and a brush that supports transparent colors.

Long time ago, I wondered how Microsoft Access put an Edit control on the context menu! Then I got another idea ... why don't we use any control(s) on the context menu? This will make the user interface easier to use, learn and increase productivity. The good news here is that, you can make it the same way you design a user control or a form using the Visual Studio designer..

The Custom Control eliminates the use of adding validators for each and every textbox added. Just by setting a couple of properties we can make our textbox validate credit card numbers, phone numbers or any other Custom expression. It provides some other built in functionalities.