Layout & Navigation using Horizontal Tabs (tabbed window) vs Vertical Tabs (sections) - layout

For our new project, we are currently looking for latest "standard" layout. It is a business webapp which includes lot of master-detail screens/forms.
In our previous projects, we have extensively used horizontal tabs like JQuery UI Tabs.
I remember old version (5) of Dynamics CRM also utilised similar approach but in there latest 2011 version, they have replaced layout to include vertical tabs like this.
I also noticed SalesForce has also related information on vertical "tab" which is essentially multiple sections on long long page. I could not find much discussion about this sort of decision? Note that MS/SF has separate layouts for mobile & surely they are not expecting businesses to use tablets.
Is everyone moving towards vertical layout when screens are becoming wider? Is there any reason for this shift?
Edit:
This is what I am talking about, the question is why?
Tab Performance - CRM 4.0 vs CRM 2011
No More Tabbing – Dynamics CRM 2011

Actually Microsoft is changing again the CRM 2011 interface, starts from Polaris release they introduced new forms, take a look at this article and the included slides:
http://niiranen.eu/crm/2013/01/whats-new-in-microsoft-dynamics-crm-polaris-release-slides/
This release brings cross-browser compatibility including Safari on iPad, so as you can see Microsoft (and SalesForce and other companies too) adapt their products trying to provide the best UI for their customers.

Related

windows 10 UWP UI design for mobile device

I am working on windows 10 mobile app. If I design an UI for 5' device, it doesn't look good on 5.2' device. Also on emulators of different screen size show messed up UI. Is there any work around this? Or do I have to design it for every screen size?
Usually, please avoid to have fixed Width/Height for your controls. With a Grid layout, you can set columns/rows and place your controls inside each cells. This is a first level to adapt properly your interface. In addition, UWP provides AdaptiveTriggers if you want to adapt the layout based on the screen resolution (cf. https://channel9.msdn.com/Series/A-Developers-Guide-to-Windows-10/07) for additional information. Last but not least, please check Design&UI documention on https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/design.
The trick is with UWP that you can design for every screensize at once. It's just a responsive design you use (either HTML/CSS or XAML). But you have to use the right controls and settings.
Some guidance on how to design for various sizes can be found at the MSDN design page.
To create a dynamic layout with XAML, see this article. There are various panel-types you can use to do the layout (see this article). But if you really want to build a responsive UI (or change it dramatically in various sizes) RelativePanel is your friend.

How can I add a button at the end of a listView?

Iwould like to add a button at the end of a listView in the same way as the bing apps do (see picture for example).
I looked for hours in google and in the microsoft documentation but canøt find anything that can give me an idea of how to do this.
Did anyone achieved this?
thanks
If you run that app (Health & Fitness), then run Visual Studio and use Debug > Attach to Process, you can open the DOM Explorer and examine how that UI is implemented.
What you'll see in this case is that it's not using a ListView at all, but rather it's own custom control that's just based on a CSS grid. That is, just because there's a grid-like view doesn't mean it's a ListView. You can always use straight HTML/CSS layout to achieve these sorts of things, which is all that's happening here. As such, it just makes separate div's for those two "More" elements.
Now if you do want to use a ListView, there are a few things you can do. First of all, if you want to render any item in a ListView differently than others, you have to make sure to use a different template. What this means is that you use an item rendering function rather than a declarative template, which then enables you to examine the item data and programmatically decide what kind of rendering to perform.
Second, if you want to have items of different sizes, then you need to use cell spanning. In Windows 8.0/WinJS 1.0 this is a property of the GridLayout. In Windows 8.1/WinJS 2.0 you instead use the CellSpanningLayout.
I have all the details for both rending functions and cell spanning written up in Chapter 7 of my second edition preview of Programming Windows Store Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, which is a free ebook from Microsoft Press so it doesn't cost you anything. :)

Top navigation bar in SharePoint with many sites

I'm just wondering if anyone has any advice or tips for when you start having a lot of Sites (or Webs) in a Site Collection in SharePoint. At the moment we have 10 and it's starting to get a bit busy on the top bar, especially on clients with a lower res screen (goes into 2 rows).
Also shortly we will want to add a section in SharePoint for every single company project. I'm thinking of creating a Site Template that can be used for each project, but we could have a thousand projects a year from now and I have a no idea how to handle navigation for that many sites!
Thank you!
You can create a mega menu to accomodate all pages. Good example to see it live would be argos.co.uk
I've created a top nav bar with an arrow, and when moving the mouse over the right arrow it will scroll horizontally the nav bar on the left (then a left arrow appears to scroll on the other way). But, to do that, you need both JS and CSS hacks (and I use a HTML5 Doctype for my masterpage to force the last rendering engine for IE - Standard Mode). That could inspire you...
One option is to use folders in your navigation to better organize the tabs. You may be able to group your subsites by department, function, or some other organizing structure.
For your projects, you may want to create a structure where you organize your projects by year, quarter, month, or whatever is appropriate. You can do this by create actual sites for each year, quarter, etc or you can keep the navigation organized manually in the Navigation settings.
Projects
2012
Q4
Project A
2013
Q1
Project B
Project C
Q2
Project D

Is it possible to create tabbed interface on a form in Dynamics CRM 2011?

Is it possible to add tabs to a Dynamics CRM 2011 form? I'm not talking about the "tabs" that are basically vertical sections on the form, which you can click the links on the navigation portion of the form to jump to.
I want a real tabbed interface like the screenshot below. Something like the jQuery tabs plugin
If that is possible, is it possible to programmatically ( using javascript/xrm perhaps? ) select which tab to set to be active/show?
By default there is no way to do that. This tab system was retired in CRM 2011, in CRM 4 all forms had tabs like that.
The only way to do that is through Web Resources (HTML or Silverlight) but you have to add manually the controls and databinding also. Searching if exist any sample to follow i found this article take a look.

Find out which colours are in use when using the MFC Feature pack in Office 2007 style

I'm updating some of our legacy C++ code to use the "MFC feature pack" that Microsoft released for Visual Studio 2008. We've used the new classes to derive our application from CFrameWndEx, and are applying the Office 2007 styles to give our application a more modern appearance. This gives us gradient filled window titles, status bars etc, and the use of the ribbon toolbars.
However, our application contains some owner drawn controls, and I'd like to update these to match the color scheme used by the feature pack. Ideally I'd like to know the light and shaded toolbar colors that are currently in use.
I've had a hunt around the documentation and web and have not yet found anything. Does anyone know how to find this information out?
[Edit]
In particular we need to find out which colors are being used at runtime. You can change the appearance of your application at runtime using the new static function CMFCVisualManager::SetDefaultManager.
The following msdn page shows you what kind of styles are available, in particular the Office2007 look:
link to msdn
Have you looked in the MFC source code, which you'll find in something like
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\atlmfc\src\mfc
Looks like CMFCVisualManager offers several methods for getting color information, e.g.
CMFCVisualManager::GetSmartDockingBaseGuideColors()
CMFCVisualManager::GetToolbarHighlightColor()
Take a look at the MSDN docs for CMFCVisualManager.
Good suggestion, but unfortunately they just return various shades of grey, when currently I'm running my application with the style CMFCVisualManagerOffice2007::Office2007_LunaBlue
Annoyingly the msdn help is "under construction" so doesn't even tell you what they are supposed to be doing!
afxGlobalData contains some useful information on the current colours, brushes and fonts being used by the MFC Feature Pack. In particular I use afxGlobalData.m_clrBarFace when painting my own control bar backgrounds.
(note that I am not in front of my work PC so the above syntax isn't spot on.)
Have you tried: 2007 Office System Document: UI Style Guide for Solutions and Add Ins
?
I guess you could use your favourite image editor and pick the colors from a screen grab.
"I guess you could use your favourite image editor and pick the colors from a screen grab."
This is essentially what I'm doing at the moment, and I've defined a list of constants from which I pull out the colours. Doesn't seem very elegant though!
Looks like CMFCVisualManager offers several methods for getting color information, e.g.
CMFCVisualManager::GetSmartDockingBaseGuideColors()
CMFCVisualManager::GetToolbarHighlightColor()
Take a look at the MSDN docs for CMFCVisualManager.
#GateKiller, the OP isn't developing an Office 2007 add-in, so the UI guidelines won't really help. It's an MFC application using the Visual C++ 2008 Feature Pack which allows MFC apps to take on the Office 2007 look and feel.
Good suggestion, but unfortunately they just return various shades of grey, when currently I'm running my application with the style CMFCVisualManagerOffice2007::Office2007_LunaBlue
CMFCVisualManagerOffice2007::GetTabFrameColors - the clrFace output param is grey?
Perhaps they're all masks on top of a single base hue for each theme? Assuming you can determine which color scheme is in effect with CMFCVisualManagerOffice2007::GetStyle(), perhaps you can figure out what that hue is and then do some masking with the GetxxxColor() methods.

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