Thursday, July 31, 2008
Thursday, July 31, 2008 6:07:46 AM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00) (WPF)

Just like Josh Smith I was looking around for some pre-rolled themes for WPF, and wondered why there was so little activity in this area. I would have thought the ability to take a professional looking UI (adjusted to match an organization's in-house style) would be a popular approach for building new business applications.

wpftheme Although there's quite a bit of work involved in creating a complete set of control templates (for all the required controls; textboxes, dropdowns, checkboxes, tab controls, lists, splitters, scrollers etc.) it can  be done (and it's a great way to learn WPF - even if you only override a few). Included here is a screen shot from my 'learning' WPF application in which I created a nearly complete control template set from scratch - including a custom toolbar strip, and dropdown/context menu system. What's more I give the user some options on basic color themes and backgrounds - just like Windows Live Writer does.

Commercially available themes must surely be on the way. Maybe they're just waiting for WPF adoption to reach higher levels, or perhaps visual designer support to improve. I'd estimate that it would take about 20 person days to complete a full theme set - and that's with a good graphic designer working with a good WPF developer together to assemble the theme.

Thursday, July 31, 2008 1:00:12 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
Hi I work for a software company that creates rich UI's. In our Aurora for Architects we have an option that is called a doucument theme. When this is applied any WPF control with a default background with take on the color specified in the theme. The user can also make thier own themes by going into the folder where the themes are held copying a file renaming it and changing the color. If you are interested thier is a free 30 day trial on the web site at mobiform.com.
Thursday, July 31, 2008 3:38:02 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
Thanks Patrick - will take a look.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008 9:07:14 AM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
At http://www.xamltemplates.net you can see a lot of WPF (XAML) templates and you can buy them, and there is one free for download.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009 4:32:35 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
Try http://www.nukeation.com - we have a lot of commercial (and free) themes with full source. We have the world's largest and most diverse theme library for WPF.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009 5:31:39 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
Hi Dax - the stuff you guys are producing looks great! Will be sure to keep you in mind for any future WPF work.
OpenID
Please login with either your OpenID above, or your details below.
Name
E-mail
(will show your gravatar icon)
Home page

Comment (Some html is allowed: a@href@title, b, em, i, strike, strong, u) where the @ means "attribute." For example, you can use <a href="" title=""> or <blockquote cite="Scott">.  

Live Comment Preview

search

categories

on this page

ads

archive

Total Posts: 94
This Year: 0
This Month: 0
This Week: 0
Comments: 77