Feeling colorful? Try out the new ComponentOne Themes for WinForms

Building a good application is so much like building a monument. Of course you can always build in any which way you like, but those monuments which stand the test of time are, more often than not, built with a lot of effort and hard work. They need a solid foundation, good design, and above all, a very basic need for them to be magnificent, their looks. Similarly, a desktop application not just requires to be robust in architecture but should also have an appealing look and feel. In our earlier endeavors, to improve the desktop experience for our customers and customers of our customers, we introduced the C1TileControl, the C1TouchToolKit and now taking the legacy forward, ComponentOne Studio for WinForms presents “Themes”. In today’s world of development, your applications are only as good as they native OS looks and feels. And for this reason, on a Win7 desktop, a WinXP styled application used to stand out like a sore thumb. What Win 7 did to Win XP, pretty soon, Win 8 and 8.1 would do to Win 7 too. Hence we, at ComponentOne decided to start out and provide our customers ways to design the UI for tomorrow. Using ComponentOne Themes, you not only dress up your applications for tomorrow, but days after tomorrow as well. In the following lines we will get to see the simplest way to style some of the most amazing looking applications,

Recipe for: A beautiful WinForms Desktop application

Ingredients:

  1. WinForms project
  2. ComponentOne Studio for WinForms
    1. Grids(C1FlexGrid)
    2. Ribbon(C1Ribbon)
    3. Themes(C1ThemeController and C1ThemeDesigner)

Steps to be followed:

  1. Create a WinForms project (C# or VB, entirely your choice)
  2. Drag and Drop required controls on the Form,
    • Ribbon (For navigation and options)
    • Grid(to show/manipulate data)
    • Themes(To create an awesome experience even while doing mundane tasks )
    • Once placed on the form, C1Themes asks the user to select the theme to be applied to complete application, current form, or to any particular control. Choose as per taste. SetTheTheme
  3. Set the layout/positioning of controls in the application to your most desired lookThemesDesign_Time
  4. Run the project running app The above application has been themed buy using "GreenHouse" theme on the C1FlexGrid and C1Ribbon.

There you are, it’s done!! A brand new, themed application ready for any work. So now not only create desktop applications for functionality, recreate a completely new UI experience for your users, using ComponentOne Studio For WinForms.

MESCIUS inc.

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