AppStylist

Application Styling

NetAdvantage AppStylist empowers designers and developers to work together more efficiently in order to create desirable user interfaces for Windows Forms and ASP.NET applications. Developers can focus on building out application functionality using Visual Studio and NetAdvantage for .NET, and designers can focus on styling those applications with a more designer-friendly tool outside of Visual Studio. Then the Application Styling Framework brings the efforts of both parties together with ease using one line of code in a Windows Forms application or via the web.config file in ASP.NET applications.

Even though the differences between the way Windows Forms and ASP.NET applications are styled is immense, NetAdvantage AppStylist reduces that difference and complexity by providing two tools--NetAdvantage AppStylist for Windows Forms (a.k.a., WinAppStylist) and NetAdvantage AppStylist for ASP.NET (a.k.a., WebAppStylist). These tools "use similar metaphors that allow designers to focus less on the idiosynchrasies of each UI platform and more on their creative process and design work," says Grant Hinkson, Director of Visual Design at Infragistics.

What's new in the latest
version of AppStylist

NetAdvantage AppStylist is a stand-alone application that works outside of the Microsoft Visual Studio IDE, and therefore empowers visual designers to create and edit style libraries, effortlessly and intuitively. NetAdvantage AppStylist styles every minute detail of your application with the help of our unique Appearance object and Presentation Layer Framework. Use the simple point-and-click interface and watch the styles change on the canvas. The user interface is divided into three intuitive, familiar sections:

Canvas
This section shows an example of your current style while dynamically updating whenever you change the style's settings.

Style Explorer
This section lets you select styles that you want to modify as well as change those styles based on the role they will play in either a user interface or as an individual component.

Properties
This section will be where most of your design efforts will take place, as it is the core section for changing the look and feel of different states.

Using styles in your application is even easier than creating a custom style itself – simply load your style library. (To make it even easier and faster, we’ve included many professionally designed styles for you to choose from.) After loading the style library, the NetAdvantage controls will pick up their default StyleSets or use a StyleSet targeted specifically for that control. You don't really have to set anything else to make it work. However, if you need the exacting precision you've come to expect from Infragistics' products, you can customize each control by setting its StyleSetName property to a custom StyleSet. You can also track if and when a StyleSet has been loaded with the StyleChanged event.

Whether you're a one-person shop or an enterprise-level business, the benefits of Infragistics Application Styling can be fully realized – NetAdvantage AppStylist works across Infragistics Windows Forms controls in a single application or multiple applications powered by NetAdvantage. Design once; style everywhere.

	Canvas This section shows an example of your current style while dynamically updating whenever you change the style's settings.
	Style Explorer This section lets you select styles that you want to modify as well as change those styles based on the role they will play in either a user interface or as an individual component.
	Properties This section will be where most of your design efforts will take place, as it is the core section for changing the look and feel of different states.