ProgressPieControl: an alternative to that [ boring :) ] ProgressBar

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Introduction

Well, I guess it happens to everyone (normally constituted ^_^) to be bored of those controls, specially the progress bar.

That fatal thing occurred to me last month, while I was doing some coding... I decided to create my own progress bar with no bars, after I searched for a substitute over the users' contributions in CodeProject.

Note

Actually, the ProgressPie uses some basic trigonometry, but do not worry, everything is easy to learn since you want to...

Using the control

Just like every control, you just have to make a reference to the library file, add it to your ToolBox (at this time ProgressPie has no ToolBox bitmap, I'm looking for one), and fill in its properties which are:

• Comment: the text you want to see inside ProgressPie.
• Maximum: the maximum value of ProgressPie.
• Minimum: the minimum value of ProgressPie.
• Value: its start value.

After you have inserted the ProgressPie control, just modify its value programmatically. In the demo code, I used a timer to make its value change at the timer's interval.

Using the ProgressPie source

The ProgressPie class contains some getters and setters, which makes it possible to access its comment, maximum, minimum and value. Some attributes are set using:

[Category("Appearance"),Description("The Maximal value of the ProgessPie.")]

But basically it overrides the OnPaint event to do some other drawing:

protected override void OnPaint(PaintEventArgs e)
{
    Graphics gr = e.Graphics; //get the graphics from the PaintEvent
    int nAngle = (int) Math.Floor ( (float) (nValue - nMinimum) / 
        (float) (nMaximum - nMinimum) * 360F);
        //convert from current value to degrees Angle
    SolidBrush redBrush = new SolidBrush(Color.Red);
    Rectangle rg = new Rectangle(this.Left - this.Location.X ,
        this.Top - this.Location.Y,this.Size.Width,this.Size.Width);
    GraphicsPath pthToDraw = new GraphicsPath();
    pthToDraw.AddRectangle(rg);
    PointF[] ptsArray = pthToDraw.PathPoints;
    PathGradientBrush pgBrush = new PathGradientBrush(ptsArray);
    //while less than alret value, draw in Green else in Red
    if (nValue < (int) Math.Floor( (double) 
                      (fAlert / 100 * ( nMaximum - nMinimum))) )
        pgBrush.CenterColor = Color.Green;         
    else
        pgBrush.CenterColor = Color.Red;
    Color[] srColor = {Color.Blue};
    pgBrush.SurroundColors = srColor;
    PointF ptCenter = new PointF( (float)(this.Left - 
                      this.Location.X + this.Size.Width / 2F ),
        (float)(this.Top - this.Location.Y + this.Size.Height / 2F ) );
    int nRay = this.Width / 2;
    double PiAngle = nAngle * Math.PI / 180 ;
    pgBrush.CenterPoint = new PointF (
            (float) ptCenter.X + nRay * (float)Math.Cos(PiAngle),
            (float) ptCenter.Y + nRay * (float)Math.Sin(PiAngle));
    gr.FillPie(pgBrush,rg,0,nAngle);
    base.OnPaint (e);
}

If you find that the ProgressPie doesn't act just like you wish, or isn't just enough colorized, you just have to modify the OnPaint override, to be fully satisfied :). Anyway, the ProgressPie uses double buffering, which is accessible using the portion of code below, which makes it smoother in high frame rates:

//dblBuffering
this.SetStyle(ControlStyles.AllPaintingInWmPaint, true);
this.SetStyle(ControlStyles.UserPaint, true);
this.SetStyle(ControlStyles.DoubleBuffer, true);

Finally

Any comment would be very helpful :)

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)