Wizard Framework for Windows Forms

A superior design-time experience is at the heart of this framework, setting it apart from the rest of the crowd. With Wizard Framework for Windows Forms, turning your blank form in to a wizard is as easy as dropping the component on there and adding as many pages as you need. Navigation between pages is simple and intuitive - you can press the back and next buttons at design time to navigate as you would at runtime, or (in the case of more complex wizards) open a simple dialog to jump to a specific page.

As per the Wizard 97 specification, the control makes it easy to design simple wizards that start with an introduction page, contain one or more "content" pages and then finish with a summary of the information gained or tasks performed during the wizard process. All of these pages are heavily customisable and can be fully designed within Visual Studio.

Accessibility need not be an issue, as the wizard fully supports large fonts and scales its elements depending on screen DPI settings. This combined with standard Windows Forms scaling means you need not worry about scaling of your user interface. You can also resize the wizard if you need more real-estate than the default size provides.

For international customers, every piece of English text within the wizard framework is fully localisable at design time.

As with all Divelements products, the Wizard Framework has the kind of design-time experience that makes it a pleasure for any developer to use. From the moment it is dropped on your form you have a fully-functional wizard, and a few clicks later and it has all the pages you need.

Should you need to modify your wizard from a linear model to a more complex process with decisions, this is made easy by simply setting the NextPage and PreviousPage properties of any page. This can be done is any of the many events exposed by pages to facilitate just this kind of behaviour. Suppose you had a number of information gathering screens, but the user should only see one depending on an initial choice they make in a previous page - this scenario is simple to achieve.

All wizard pages are fully designable - even the cover pages (introduction and summary). Pages have a "client area" on which any child controls can be placed. The standard headings and descriptive text are fully configurable, and where applicable pages show guidelines at design-time to facilitate placing of child controls according to Wizard-97 specifications.

Although normally the wizard will be docked to fill the entire form, it can be resized and parented to any other control. Both the margin and banner images are easily selectable via the property grid.

Wizard Framework has a refined set of features, all designed to give the right degree of control over your wizard process.

Wizard

• Easy to add to any form, configured out-of-the-toolbox for a simple linear wizard.
• Adding new pages and manipulating existing ones is easy via standard verbs and controls.
• Each page can control whether the Back, Next or Cancel buttons are functional when it is displayed.
• Validation of data input on a page is easy by responding to an event raised by the page.
• Other page events give hooks for populating data on a page while it is loading and performing actions after a page has loaded.
• Full programmatic access allows instant jumping to any page or simulation of the Back and Next buttons.
• Right-to-left aware for Hebrew, Arabic and similar languages.

InformationBox

• Choose from any of the standard system icons to be displayed with your information.
• Text is easy to enter at design time - even in two paragraphs without resorting to inserting newline characters in code.
• Right-to-left aware for Hebrew, Arabic and similar languages.