This topic discusses the new user interface features added in version 4 such as listed below:

• New Default Styles
• Fluid Round Corner
• Animated Background Image
• Enhanced User Interactions
• Stunning Sliding Animation

New Default Styles

WebCombo now comes with an improved user interface that sports neutral colors with minimalist look and feel. The fresh look and feel was modeled after the new Windows operating system. As the results, WebCombo control now provides more familiar and consistent user interface throughout your web applications.

The following shows the WebCombo's look and feel in different state.

WebCombo in normal state:

WebCombo in hover state:

WebCombo in active state:

Single column WebCombo, with status bar in the bottom by default:

WebCombo with multiple columns:

In version 4, the column header now has flat separator with soft blue gradient background. This look and feel is the default style in WebCombo version 4. WebCombo is also using "Segoe UI" as the standard font in all UI elements. As a clear type font, it ensures better readability and smooth display.

By default, WebCombo will use Tahoma font when "Segoe UI" cannot be found in user's computer.

Fluid Round Corner

One of the most significant user interface improvements in version 4 is the ability to render round corner around the edges of the control. The round corner rendering is fluid and flexible, which means that it can be drawn properly regardless of the user specified size.

The round corner rendering in WebCombo adopts Intersoft's proprietary TrueShape rendering framework which is widely used in WebDesktop components.

The following illustration shows various round corner user interface which works properly in a number of combinations.

Round corner rendering using default style:

Round corner with combination of background image during hover state:

Round corner interface with dropdown in the left side:

Round corner interface with borderless frame:

Round corner interface without dropdown:

For more information, see How-to: Enable Round Corner in WebCombo.NET 4.0.

Animated Background Image

WebCombo supports background image animation to help you replicate rich UI controls similar to Windows UI controls. In this version, the background image animation is supported in dropdown element only.

When a new instance of WebCombo is created in designer (design time), the EnableAnimation property is enabled by default. However, to preserve compatibility with existing applications, this new feature will not be automatically enabled in the existing instances of WebCombo.

For more information, see How-to: Enable animation.

Enhanced User Interactions

In addition to new user interface and new productivity features introduced in version 4.0, this new version also improves in the user interaction area. The user interaction includes the main behavior of the WebCombo control, such as how it handles focus and lost focus, the typing and asynchronous loading experience, the dropdown button click behaviors when single clicked and double clicked and many more.

The improvement in user interaction ensures your end users to have best experience while interacting with the WebCombo control as main input and data selection control.

Stunning Sliding Animation

One of the Intersoft's key goals in the latest release is to deliver smooth and animation feature in its WebUI Studio lineups. You can now quickly add quadratic sliding animation to WebCombo control with a property set. When the feature is applied, the sliding animation will apply when you clicked on the dropdown arrow. The animation will be also applied every time the dropdown content is displayed, such as when you type into the textbox.

To learn more about sliding animation, see How-to: Enable Sliding Animation in WebCombo.

See Also

 

 

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