Fireball.Windows.Forms Outlook 2003 NavBar Clone

• FireballFramework - 1.5 mb
• Another DiscoverControl Demo

Introduction

Fireball.Windows.Forms is a library devoted to creating some custom and advanced User Interface Control with professional look, all control of this library are licenzed under the term of LGPL Licenze that give you the possibilty to use my library on you commercial products the only requirement is to provide the source of my library if you apply modification on the code otherwise also a link to my website is apreciated ;)

Using the library

For use this library you don't need to be a programmer expert because most of this control are simple to use, Fireball.Windows.Forms contains some controls that are not show on this article because are incomplete or because are in fixing, the TabStrip Control is a work in progress but it is fully working, on future i can add custom renderm other nice features ;), The best control Presented on this Article is the Discover Control!! it a nice navigation system like the Microsoft Outlook 2003, with this control you can give to your product a better user interface, with an easy to use separation of you software functionalities.

On Fireball.Windows.Forms it is also present a Control called DocumentPresenter is the control that you see on the image with the text Welcome to Fireball, this control give you the power to add document viewing like a Microsoft Outlook 2003 document, the example provided not give the full graphics power it is only a test, if anyone can make an application you are freely to send me a screenshot and i put it on my websites ;), another nice control is FormatLabelControl, this control was merged from the LGPL code provided from the compona software http://www.compona.com, this control give to you the possibility to show a text with html formattation.

Putting a Discover control on your form is very simple you can simply drag from your toolbox,and also adding a pane is simple you need only to right click on the control on the Visual Studio 2005 designer and Select "Add Discover Pane", for setting pane properties for now you need to select the new created pane from the PropertyGrid this because i need to solve an issue with the designer.

TabStrip control because for now is a work in progress, it can be used only from code see this example

TabStrip tabStrip = new TabStrip();
tabStrip.Dock = DockStyle.Fill;
myForm.Controls.Add(tabStrip);
TabStripItem myItem = new TabStripItem();
myItem.Text = "Hello i am a TabStrip";
tabStrip.Controls.Add(myItem);

If you run this code you see the created tabstrip with an item ;)

On this example is also showed a simple FileSystemTreeView but it incomplete and not perfect.

Bugs And Updates

You have find a bug?you have any comment on this controls?or simply on search of the last version, please go on http://www.dotnetfireball.net and ask your questions on my forum.

N.B. this is a brief article i can write more later.

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