UI: Become windowless

港控/mmm° 2022-08-14 01:45 6阅读 0赞

这是一篇很出名的文章。

里面提到的许多内容，比如WTL，我在工程中使用过。那个软件至今公司还在大卖特卖。

再比如dynamic CRM，我维护和开发了一年。算是有点研究。

所以,有必要研究一下.因为作者的许多想法,与感同深受了.

[http://www.viksoe.dk/code/windowless1.htm][http_www.viksoe.dk_code_windowless1.htm]

# UI: Become windowless #

![UI: Become windowless][UI_ Become windowless]

Written by Bjarke Viksoe.  
This article was submitted 6/26/2005.  
  
  
A request on the [Yahoo WTL newsgroup][] and a [blog-article][] sparked some interest to look closer at creating a **windowless user-interface**. Traditionally, Windows applications are built upon the GDI/User windowing hierarchy, and thus restricted in several areas. While you can certainly generate a nice application quickly with the built-in control-set and get a standard clean look, you will soon enough stumble upon the limitations of the Windows controls - especially if you want to build something that looks a little more flashy. The native Win32 custom-draw/owner-draw technique is limited, next to no support for transparent windows, rigid control scaling/resizing and the Common Controls are merely remnants of Windows Explorer, Office or Internet Explorer widgets.

A windowless user-interface doesn't make use of the native Win32 controls. Instead it custom paints every control and widget on the screen - including labels, buttons, list control, etc. etc. Variations of this kind of interface is not new: "Skinning" has been widely accepted for its cool application-look, as seen in Nullsoft's WinAmp and the MS Media Player. But skinning is usually only feasible for small applications hosting a limited number of dialogs. If you're building a large database-driven application, you'll want to have a solid framework to back your dialog design up.

So I was looking at the [Microsoft CRM][] application. In my opinion, this is one of the most successful [DHTML interfaces][] I've seen (I should know because I've previously been assigned on a large browser-based CRM product). The MS CRM interface looks very Windows XP-like, but it also has several cool features, such as a navigation bar, a highly flexible list control and several shaded/gradient tool panels. I thought this would be a nice look to build for my windowless framework. I've previously tested a DHTML interface with this look, but wasn't satisfied - mostly because integrating with the browser (IE) was painfully complicated.

![Direct UI sample][]Even if constructing a windowless user-interface is a lot of hard work, it pays off in the end. But you do need to implement your own dialog builder, button-design, keyboard interface and lots of little things you take for granted. Actually it's not the painting of buttons and toolbars that take the most planning and effort; it's supporting keyboard shortcuts, tab-navigation, automatic tooltips and a scalable design. And then there are the mandatory - but often overlooked - features, such as list column-sorting, intuitive focus changes and overflow scrolling that need to be addressed.

## The design ##

My **Direct UI** user-interface takes bits and pieces from other UI models. Specifically it borrows ideas of the "controls-inside-controls" design from the Java AWT framework, XML dialog-resources from .NET, event-bubbling from DHTML and C++ helper classes from MFC. The code doesn't actually use the WTL library like most of my [other user interface samples][] on this website. It's pure Win32 calls.

One of the requirements for the framework was that it could be placed in an external DLL. This had a *nasty impact on the design*, because C++ templates are not by any sane method exportable in a DLL. So, a clean C++ old-skool (MFC) design is enforced, with single inheritance and few (if not none) macros.  
A window is built by nesting controls inside each other. Some controls are containers (such as the ToolBar, which contains ToolButtons). To insert a ToolBar button, you simply construct a `CToolButton` C++ class and add it to the `CToolPanel` control container. Most containers define layout algorithms such as the vertical layout-panel, which arranges the contained elements below each other - a feature known from Java AWT.

Using a Java-like design, such as the layout containers, make sure that your controls will rescale automatically when the window is resized. But anyone who has done any Java development knows how limiting its control layout features are and has wished to kick the authors of the [GridBagLayout][] class in the nuts. So there's also room for a dialog layout-panel, which allows you to put controls at a fixed position, but with the option of scaling based on various stretching rules.  
Constructing an entire window by hand is tedious, so there's a small XML parser included (extremely fast, extremely non-compliant) which parses and builds a window from an XML string.  
The framework caches all of its Win32 brushes and pens. Most of the GDI resources saved on window handles are probably spent on this. But these kinds of objects are light-weight; it's the paint job that gets an incredible overhaul.  
Native Win32 controls are used only for the `EDIT` control. This control contains so much functionality that it would take ages to do a decent replacement. Single-line edit controls are created on the fly (when you click on the frame) and multi-line edits are always visible. So the framework does have the ability to embed native Win32 controls and even ActiveX controls, but at the expense of screen flickering and severe restrictions in the visual effects I'm planning.

### Alluring text ###

The real benefits of this type of interface are the simple things. For instance, you can with one single swoop replace all occurences of Win32 `DrawText()` with `DrawPrettyHtmlFormattedText()` \- which instantly gives you icons, customizable text-colors and clickable hyperlinks in the entire user-interface. With one single line of code, you can now add HTML links in the statusbar panel.   
Similar, you are not restricted to only put `CToolButton` controls inside the ToolBar. Any kind of control can be added. This also goes for the list control, which quickly can be made cool by adding some group-labels, or just by adding buttons or HTML links. Since the individual controls rarely erase the background, most of them will actually fit transparently inside the other container controls, so once you've made a neat widget it can be reused in the entire user interface.

### 3D Animations ###

Another cool effect that can be easily added is the ability to do 3D rendering directly on the canvas. Just throw in some DirectX calls and you'll be able to write cool page transitions, highlight a control with some cool sparkling particle-effect or just put some glow effect on the edit-box with focus.   
You can also read about how I [integrated DirectX][] into the application.

## The sample ##

This may all sound very nice. However, the sample presented here is just the initial stage of a windowless framework I'll use for further testing. The library will need to mature a bit and go through a few rewrite cycles before I'll attempt to actually incorporate it in a real application. Still, it's pretty functional already. Enjoy.   
Wangchyz has a project on Google Code where's he's trying to extend the library, adding fixes and new samples.

The sample should be run with **DirectX 9** installed and a modern 3D graphics card. Otherwise you will not be able to view the pretty 3D animations.

## Source Code Dependencies ##

[Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0][Microsoft Visual C_ 6.0]  
[Microsoft DirectX 9 SDK][]

## Useful Links ##

[An extended version: Duilib][An extended version_ Duilib]

## Download Files ##

<table> 
 <tbody> 
  <tr> 
   <td style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><img alt="Download" src="http://www.viksoe.dk/code/site/download.gif"></td> 
   <td style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><a href="http://www.viksoe.dk/code/downloads/directui.zip" style="color:rgb(0,153,204); text-decoration:none" rel="nofollow">Demonstration&nbsp;<small><span style="font-size:12px">(96 Kb)</span></small></a><br> <a href="http://www.viksoe.dk/code/downloads/directui_src.zip" style="color:rgb(0,153,204); text-decoration:none" rel="nofollow">Source Code&nbsp;<small><span style="font-size:12px">(127 Kb)</span></small></a></td> 
  </tr> 
 </tbody> 
</table>

[http_www.viksoe.dk_code_windowless1.htm]: http://www.viksoe.dk/code/windowless1.htm
[UI_ Become windowless]: /images/20220810/5e97ad7732444d03a9cfce74655a08e7.png
[Yahoo WTL newsgroup]: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wtl/
[blog-article]: http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2005/02/11/371042.aspx
[Microsoft CRM]: http://www.microsoft.com/businesssolutions/crm/
[DHTML interfaces]: http://blogs.msdn.com/aaronel/articles/230420.aspx
[Direct UI sample]: /images/20220810/5ab43933c62c4d43a3b16d8a3472dbe6.png
[other user interface samples]: http://www.viksoe.dk/code/all_wtl.htm
[GridBagLayout]: http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/docs/api/java/awt/GridBagLayout.html
[integrated DirectX]: http://www.viksoe.dk/code/windowless2.htm
[Microsoft Visual C_ 6.0]: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/
[Microsoft DirectX 9 SDK]: http://www.microsoft.com/directx/
[An extended version_ Duilib]: http://code.google.com/p/duilib/