Build Office-Inspired UI with Infragistics WPF

[Infragistics] Mihail Mateev / Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Apply tried and tested Office-like design and functionality to your applications with minimum effort and with great results. Build any type of business app with UI that will delight your users. The Infragistics WPF toolkit has you covered with a range of controls and components that come with just about everything you need built-in so you can just start with you business logic and worry of little else. Compliment your rich functionality with rich presentation that your users already know.

With the great UX of the Office Ribbon, spreadsheets and diagramming, ready-made themes and MVVM support, to some under-the-hood features the Infragistics WPF controls make development a breeze and the results should immediately feel familiar when presented to users, truly keeping everyone happy. So let's see what's in the toolbox.

 

The Ribbon

The xamRibbon is the centerpiece of an Office UI application and this control with everything needed to present your application's features in the best possible way - there's the expected tabs, quick access toolbar and the application menu/backstage and much more.

 

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There's even modern Office 2013 chrome (to compliment the matching ribbon UI) provided by a custom xamRibbonWindow which you can also reuse to refresh any other window.

 

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Editing

The xamRichTextEditor is the one-stop solution for a Word-like text editing experience with a full range of range of formatting capabilities and objects built-in, commanding support for common tasks such as copy, paste, undo, redo and more. Those actions will also be available to users with the same keyboard shortcuts they already know so they can leverage their previous experience. The editor also supports import and export for popular formats out-of-the-box and of course MVVM.

 

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As you can guess the documents handling is built upon the various documents frameworks in the package and those like the Word Framework and Excel Framework are always available to handle your custom document-handling needs.

Diagramming

The xamDiagram is exactly what it sounds and looks like - a canvas on which users can create diagrams and flowcharts with the simplicity of drag and drop interactions and simple settings in a style just like Microsoft Visio. The same interactions and shortcuts are built right in - and then some!

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There's also a companion toolbox control with a number of predefined shapes and just like everything else those are customizable and you can easily create your own. Besides creating great UX by default the MVVM and commanding support make developing a breeze as well. Of course, support for the proper file format is also included in the package.

 

Gantt Chart

With configurable hierarchical grid and chart views the Gantt Chart control brings the experience of MS project at your users' fingertips. Scheduling and managing workflows, timed resources, dependencies and much more is as easy and adding this control to your app

 

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Scheduling

Add Outlook-style calendar views to your application with the XamSchedule - not a singular control, but rather a solution made up of a number of different views (day/month), data managers and data connectors. The views are interactive an dallow users to drag, resize and generally manipulate items just like they are used to and include the event configuration dialogs as well.

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Radial Menu

The xamRadialMenu control modeled after the modern version of the OneNote application - with a range of built-in tools like buttons, color wells, numeric gauges and lists. Fully customizable and with MVVM support it is and available for you to create your custom touch-friendly contextual menus.

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Excel inside your app!

Adding the XamSpreadsheet to your XAML is literally all it takes to instantly create Excel-like editing experience right inside your own application:

 

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From formatting options and interactions to feature behaviors - everything will feel familiar to the users and is built in with shortcuts and even a solid undo/redo stack. There's also shapes and even full backgrounds. And then you can actually start customizing and using custom themes to match your needs.

Outlook-style navigation

With the Ribbon, scheduling, and rich editing, there are almost all the makings of an entire Outlook inspired application, but one - navigation. The xamOutlookBar provides the familiar side menu with collapsible groups with dynamic overflow and built-in docking and flyout and in style:

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...and so much more...

It's no surprise with a toolset this big there are always more controls in the box to help out. There's a range of editors - including the usual color picker and even a syntax editor for code and a Visual Studio-like property grid, spell checker, docking and themeing managers, frameworks. There's an all-powerful Pivot Grid for your data analytics needs. Packed with features and style (a whole bunch of pre-defined themes like light/dark metro and Office 2013) Infragistics WPF can help you deliver the next Office-inspired UI application!

Try it out

If you want to first have a look, we have a number of exemplary Office inspired sample applications including Word, Excel and Outlook. And those are some solid examples as well - built with best patterns and practices from Prism and you should definitely have a look and see what's possible!