We need to adapt an existing MFC, C++ native application (GUI) so the text will enlarge with user preference in system preference:
Windows Settings|Ease of Access|Display|Make text bigger.
Nowadays application will scale their text depending on this user preference. I have found links explaining how to do this using C# or C++/WinRT:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/uwp/api/windows.ui.viewmanagement.uisettings.textscalefactor
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/design/input/text-scaling
We would like to use a native C++ API in order to ease the development effort. Building bridges to C# or c++/WinRT would also complexify our solution.
We have already adapted our application to DPI scaling.
Thanks for your help
Related
My App is supposed to run on both Mac and PC. It needs to access the local file system and manipulate it. I also need to be able to resize images and create watermarked images as well as thumbnails. It's important for my user interfaces to look as similar as possible on both platforms.
Therefore I've been looking at QT which seems to be really up to date but I'm not very familiar with C++. I noticed that QT has support for the Webkit engine and wonder if my application UI can be written in HTML and be controlled using C++?
has anyone done this before? Any pros and cons are really appreciated.
Use Qt
Qt has a strong user community and easy-to-use documentation. All of the platform-specific code is packaged up into C++ clases (QImage, QFile, etc.).
Don't Use HTML for a Qt GUI
Caveat: If you plan on using an HTML interface I don't know if Qt is really a good solution. The default UI for Qt is XML-based (at design-time! - at run-time it uses the native platform GUI).
I haven't personally used WebKit to implement any user interfaces with Qt and that is not the intended design. Usually you'll invoke WebKit to display an embedded web page or help file.
Use QML for an HTML-Like Interface in Qt
As pointed out by gvd below, if you want to design your interface using HTML-like technology, then you will want to use QML.
Sources:
http://doc.qt.nokia.com/latest/qimage.html
http://doc.qt.nokia.com/latest/qfile.html
http://doc.qt.nokia.com/latest/qtscript.html
Develop C++ Qt application GUI interfaces in HTML+javascript?
http://doc.qt.nokia.com/4.7-snapshot/qdeclarativeintroduction.html
I'm looking for suggestions on technologies to design a windows UI that's powered by HTML. I've run across HTMLayout which seems pretty good if not perhaps a bit limited. Are there any other technologies that would provide a good platform for creating an application UI based on HTML?
You could use chromiumembedded. You get the power of Google's Chrome in your application.
Evernote used CEF (Chromium Embedded Framework) when they moved from C# back to C++.
Unlike HTMLayout, CEF has a permissive license, which allows usage in commercial applications without paying royalties. The drawback would be the huge binary size.
Qt has the ability to use CSS to layout ui and some other cool things. MSHTML namespace and COM interfaces allow for some ui styles as well. That's all I know of off the top of my head for C++
Windows 8 when released will provide some sort of API using HTML5 and JavaScript for tile based applications in the start screen.
i like to build desktop application , that will be must user friendly in view
what i mean is that the look and feel will be natural in the way the user used to see windows
apps .
and this toolkit/framework to be as much as possible easy fast to develop from the developer side in c++ .
Could we ask some more questions, what do you mean by user friendly(system integration easy keybingings/Accessibility)?
Which platforms(windows only? You seem to indicate this, if so xp-7?
Would fairly easy crossplatform support be a plus))?
Do you want a form builder? an ide? special libraries?
open source or closed source?
do you mind paying?
qt is probably the most recommended
option although there is also
FLTK
Juce
wxwidgets
gtk+(c based or use with gtk-- a c++ wrapper)
I'd go with Qt.
It's a mature cross platform library that is easy to setup and to use. There's also a ton of resources available. The QT designer can also help you to quickly create your forms. There's even a visual studio plugin for it!
As others have pointed out Qt is a great choice. I went through the same search when I started coding C++ coming from Delphi, and this is where Qt shined. It was the only option I found that offered a complete solution: GUI, DB access, cross-platform system calls (file-access, start-processes), XML, native platform configuration (text files in *nix, win-registry, etc), multi-threading.
It was a one-stop shop for everything I needed.
When I create a 'Windows Forms Application', the resultant program is a managed one. Creating a 'Win32 Application' results in a native one, but when I try to add a form I'm informed that the project will be converted to CLI if I continue. How do I design a native Windows GUI with Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition? I'm probably being very silly here, but I just can't figure it out.
Either use MFC, WTL, or straight Win32 API. You can't use forms (or any of .NET) without switching into managed code.
MFC is Microsoft Foundation Classes - the most common C++ windows library
WTL is Windows Template library - a better C++ windows library IMO
Win32 is CreateWindow, DialogBox, etc, everything else is a wrapper around the Win32 api.
You just need to avoid the managed libraries. Most likely, this will mean using MFC for the GUI, instead of Windows Forms. For details, see MSDN's MFC pages.
Unfortunately, VC++ Express Edition doesn't support MFC directly, so you'll have be more limited. It is possible to compile MFC projects using the Express Edition, but you lose all of the Wizards, etc. If you are serious about doing non-managed GUI development, you should consider upgrading to a higher level SKU.
Another option would be to use Qt for for GUI. It is now LGPL, so usable, for free, in even commercial C++ projects, and includes a full designer.
This is an answer to the linked question. Unfortunately, that has been closed by Robert Harvey because he thinks it is a duplicate. It is not, sorry Bob.
The best library for creating xll's is http://xll.codeplex.com. You can use that to create rudimentary user interfaces using Excel macros. One example of that can be found in the ALERT.FILTER macro in xll/error.cpp
As Reed Copsey, MFC would be the "default" way of creating a native unmanaged GUI on the Windows platform. However, MFC is not included with Visual Studio Express. Consequently, you would either need to upgrade to the full version or you could look into using a freely available C++ GUI library such as wxWidgets.
There is also wxFormsBuilder if you want a GUI editor.
You could also go down to the "bare metal" and code right to the Win32 API, maybe take some help from the common controls library. But you'll be entering a world of pain ;)
You would need to use a native application framework. For Windows this means MFC or the bare Win32 libraries. WinForms use .NET libraries in the background and therefore need to be managed.
Native applications don't use "forms". For a native application, you could create, for example, an MFC application. If you want it to be something like a form-based application, you can tell the wizard you want a dialog-based application, or (on the last page of the Wizard) have your view derive from CFormView instead of CView.
Alternatively, you might want to use WTL -- though that means writing essentially all your code by hand instead of using wizards and such.
Windows Forms is the name given to the graphical application programming interface (API) included as a part of Microsoft's .NET Framework, providing access to the native Microsoft Windows interface elements by wrapping the existing Windows API in managed code.
Wikipedia
Most of the above answers explain things pretty well - if you want to look into creating a pure Win32 Native App form (no MFC/WTL etc) take a look at the tutorials here: http://www.zetcode.com/tutorials/winapi/ for starters. That's the third time I've linked to this site on here, but his tutorials are very good.
Note - at this stage there's nothing "visual" about it except the result - it is all done in code, although that said I don't think it is too difficult really. It will definitely be good programming experience.
Windows Forms are a GUI framework written in managed code, so you cannot use Forms in a native application.
With a native application, you have to create windows. Programming Windows by Charles Petzold is the definitive how-to book for this. It's a lot of work compared to using a good framework. MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes) is a framework for native Windows GUIs. I don't know if it comes with VC++ Express.
I noticed that no one mentioned JUCE which can be used to build cross platform user interfaces in C++. I thought it was pretty cool. Looks like it's been expanded to support mobile devices too since I used it.
Personal and Educational licenses are free. 'Pro' and 'Indie' licenses are relatively cheap.
Now that I know C++ I want to get into desktop application that have a UI instead of Command Prompt stuff, where should I start?, and what are some good online resources?
wxWidgets is a cross platform GUI library for C++ (and other languages). The main site should have enough pointers to resources to get going.
You might also want to check out this question/answer here on stack overflow if you are specifically thinking of Windows
If cross platform support is important then I would second the suggestion to look at Qt. It supports Windows, Linux and the Mac. For free software it is free (there is a GPL version on Unix but not for Windows) but for comercial software it is not particulary cheap. There are now several books on Programming with Qt.
It does come with a large number of extra libraries for networking, parsing XML etc. It also has integration with Visual Studio on Windows.
One downside with Qt is that there are not as many add on libraries as with some other GUI frameworks. Ot will depend on the type of applications that you wish to write whether this is important to you or not.
I use Codegear's C++ Builder. It's C++ language support is not 100% but it more than makes up for it by having a great two-way RAD IDE and the ability to use a huge library of existing Delphi components.
How about QT? Its cross-platform and its is used in a lot of commercial softwares.
On Linux and maybe Windows, you can use Gtk+ with Glade. Gtk+ is the GUI toolkit. Glade is a GUI drag and drop GUI editor. If you came from Windows or Java and thought GUI programming is hard, this stuff is easy.
If marketability is a concern, then C++/CLI with WinForms and WPF which really translates to "just learn WinForms and WPF, regardless of what specific language you use".
CodeProject has a ton of WinForms/WPF samples/tutorials to get you started.
The Fox GUI Toolkit
Really decent tried-and-true toolkit with a very nice event system. I've used the Ruby port, and my Windows apps had a very native look and feel.
It might lack some features, but FLTK is an incredibly simple cross-platform GUI library.
If you are using Windows the traditional place to start is Petzold
There is a nice simple framework here which will help you on the way without abstracting too much away.
Get Visual Studio Express, and start with a MFC "Dialog Based" application. All the window toolkits mentioned are good, but MFC will look the best on a resume!