Could I do this by just using visual studio?

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Hello everyone! So some of you might already know that I lost some inspiration and hope in C# because of the lack of design that you were able to do with Visual Studio and now I've gotten some huge inspiration, when I saw this it made me want to start coding in C# again so badly, but the thing is I dont know if this is possible with just Visual Studio alone, let me explain.

1. Do I need to use Bunifu.NET?

2. Could I make the same design type without having to use WPF Application?

3. Is there any other way of doing the same style? (That is free)

Sorry I cant explain it more in depth but that is the softwares I want to create, well I want to give them that modern style, I dont want to create that software that is being showed in the video but the design.
C#, Modern Flat UI Dashboard winform Design Bunifu.NET - YouTube

What I have tried:

I've tried looking over the internet for solutions

Posted 12-Apr-16 5:25am

BladeLogan

Updated 12-Apr-16 23:39pm

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Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 12-Apr-16 11:42am

1) "Do I need..." — for what?
2) "Same design..." — what design? Why without WPF? You need to answer this "why" question seriously.
3) What style? Why "any other way"? What are your requirements to the "way"?

What features of style you are unhappy with? If you "cannot explain it more", why asking questions? You did not pose any problem. The general answer would be: you can implement virtually any design in .NET, and it is not related to Visual Studio, which is nothing but IDE.

How do you think the authors of this commercial library used? Just .NET. And you can do it, too.
Now, about your video... Be careful. Such questions can be considered as commercial promotion, that is, spam, which can result in cancellation of your member account.

The page you referenced contains spam, too.

—SA

BladeLogan 12-Apr-16 11:56am

Sorry for being so unclear sir.

1. Do I need to use Bunifu.NET to create a flat UI design such as being showed in the video posted in the question.

2. I feel like using a WPF application instead of a Windows Form Application would be alot of time waste when creating the same software but you can get to the design part much easier and faster, i.e
Lets say I had Bunifu.NET and used the same method they used in the video to create a similar Windows Form Application, it goes alot faster then creating everything with xml in the WPF.

So my question is.

Could I create the same type of design (The Flat UI) looking design without going through the hassle of using xml and WPF (Its really not that im trying to weasle my way through extra work its just that I perfer Windows Form Application) even though its lacking the UI design part which WPF provides.

And for the third question, If you can create the same looking design the (Flat Ui) look, is there any other (Free) extensions I ould use (IfI need an extention that is)

I didnt know it was considered spam, I would be glad to close this question once I get an answer.

CHill60 12-Apr-16 12:19pm

SA will not have been notified of your response - use the "Reply" link next to a post to ensure the poster is notified.
You don't have to use WPF - but I'm not sure why you think WinForms is "faster". There are other libraries available, most of them are open-source or you can draw your own custom controls.
You might want to do some research on Themes and Skins.
Have a look at this article which creates a button WinForm ImageButton[^]

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 12-Apr-16 23:21pm

Thank you for the note. Indeed, I missed this comment, and that's why I did not answer.
Faster "WinForms" is a pure myth. In most "normal" graphical chores, WPF is faster because of the DirectX hardware acceleration. I believe faster Forms solution may exist, but it's a rare situation.
Let me reiterate: even without themes or skins, anyone can create any imaginable presentation. There are no limitations on what pixels are shown in UI. It's true for both Forms and WPF...
—SA

Philippe Mori 12-Apr-16 23:50pm

Although WinForms could be used, WPF is more adapted for that if one want to do everything himself.

BladeLogan 12-Apr-16 23:55pm

So you would still recommend me to use WPF?

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 13-Apr-16 0:57am

It totally depends on what you want to achieve. Generally, yes.
—SA

BladeLogan 13-Apr-16 0:32am

Are you good with HTML & CSS?

Philippe Mori 13-Apr-16 7:44am

This is another option... Many things, you can do in WPF, you can do in HTML.

ZurdoDev 12-Apr-16 12:30pm

You can do pretty much anything in Visual Studio.

RickZeeland 12-Apr-16 13:26pm

I think you can create the same type of design without WPF, but it will take some time of course. So if you are in a hurry: buy the Bunifu library (but do some research on it first, are there more controls than shown in the demo for instance, or is it limited to that).

Philippe Mori 12-Apr-16 23:56pm

I think that except for very simplistic interface, it would still be easier and faster to learn WPF...

In my WinForms application, I do use WPF for some controls where it would be much harder to do the same look in WinForms.

BladeLogan 12-Apr-16 23:58pm

Yeah I can understand that! :-)

Also I know some xml but not too much, Does it take long to learn how to create slim and flat UI design with XML? Like is there alot to learn in that field?

Philippe Mori 13-Apr-16 0:13am

It is hard to figure out for someone else as we don't know how fast they learn and how long it would take them to get what they want. For professionnal software development where you can accept something similar to what you want, then a third party component it probably the best solution... You have to try them say during one week and then decide if it works for you. However if your requirement are very specific, then maybe you have to do it custom anyway...

Doing it yourself, you would also take a week to learn and try it...

Thus in 2 weeks you could have a good idea what would be more appropriate.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 13-Apr-16 1:02am

I think WPF is considerably simpler than Forms exactly on simplistic UI, except for lamers manually positioning each control with a mouse... WPF is notoriously confusing with some seemingly apparent custom behavior, especially for people with Forms experience.
—SA

Philippe Mori 13-Apr-16 0:01am

In practice, you should either find a component that give you the possibility to get what you want or use WPF.

It it much harder to customize WinForms... Well, if you only want to do rectangular coloured regions, a few labels and maybe customized buttons, this would not be that hard in WinForms but if you want more complex controls with tab navigation, shortcut, keyboard handling and more, it might take much more time in WinForms (that learning and doing it in WPF) as customization on predefined controls is more limited and doing your own control might take a lot of time to implement all desired behaviours.

BladeLogan 13-Apr-16 0:06am

I will get in to WPF forms, im reading about it at this moment and the more I think about it, it feels like it will some how be the easiest way to go in the long run

BladeLogan 13-Apr-16 0:31am

Hey btw! Are you good with HTML & css?

Philippe Mori 13-Apr-16 8:00am

As with WPF, I have used them but my usage is rather simple...

The thing to remember is that with HTML/CSS route, you will need javascript so for a C# application, that might be somewhat inconvenient...

2 solutions

Solution 2

I haven't seen anyone mention this yet, and it doesn't seem to be in the list from Solution 1.

If you do go down the WPF route then have a look at Microsoft Expression Blend - Welcome to Expression Blend[^] for creating your GUI in WPF (or Silverlight). It's has a free version, links well with Visual Studio and is quite an easy tool to get various effects and looks on your controls.

There is also a huge slew of tutorials on it - Learn Microsoft Expression Blend: videos, tutorials, whitepapers[^]

Posted 12-Apr-16 23:38pm

CHill60

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leon de boer · Accepted Answer · 2016-04-12T08:04:00

Your video is showing a fairly standard Visual Programming framework and editor and more specifically that editor is what would be called a WYSIWYG Design Editor.

Generally when they are in this form the correct terminology for them is Graphical user interface builders. Wiki carries a list of them for just about everything you could imagine

List of graphical user interface builders and rapid application development tools - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Most of us have seen these come and go and none of them have made any real impact because they generally have rather large drawbacks which ultimately limit them to very specific program situations and generally layman or naive programmers are the target audience.

The editor shown in your video looks very similar in operation to the old Delphi (Visual Pascal) editor in operation. Embarcadero is the current owner of Delphi and has just released version 10 which does many of the same sorts of things you just showed, they have a video which looks sort of similar to the one you showed.

So as it seems to be the WYSIWYG design element that seems to excite you then perhaps work your way thru the wiki list looking at options that may interest you. You will have to discuss the ones that interest you on an appropriate forum as most programmers develop "run away" instincts when we see these things.