Monday, November 21, 2011

From the author of YLAD, we now have YLOD (Your Last Options Dialog)

Mister Goodcat - Announcing: Your Last Options Dialog (YLOD)

"Similar to the idea behind my project "Your Last About Dialog" (YLAD) I have created an implementation of a generic options/settings dialog for Windows Phone. The goal is to make it as easy as possible for you to set up such a dialog, but at the same time keep all options to extend and customize it when required. The features in detail are:

  • Uses reflection to support arbitrary objects as "data providers" for the options page. No need to implement custom interfaces or use special types – continue using your POCOs for your user and application settings.
  • Use attributes to customize the behavior and looks of your individual options, in particular:
    • Supports grouping of options into pivot items
    • Supports sorting of options
    • Supports validation
    • Supports localization using standard resources mechanism
    • Has custom features depending on the data type (e.g. input scope for strings etc.)
    • Much more…
  • Highly extensible component, in particular:
    • Change existing views (editors) to your own
    • Add support for additional data types – even your custom ones
    • Implement custom validators for your particular needs
  • Prepares and extracts all data on a background thread for maximum responsiveness

This initial release already supports a wide variety of data types, including bool, integral types (byte, short, int, long), floating types (float, double, decimal), DateTime, TimeSpan, strings, color and all enumerations. To learn more, please visit the project:

..."

I hate the drudge work of wheel reinvention, especially when my re-invented wheel kind of sucks, but since it's the only wheel that's available... If our re-invention doesn't add value, then why waste time on it? Again, because it's the only way we could get ANY wheel!

Every app has an about dialog, and Mister Goodcat shared with a re-usable wheel (aka re-usable about box). Now he's taken it one step further and shared with us another wheel, this time for our Options dialog!

Pretty soon all we're going to have to focus on is our unique business logic... :P

 

Related Past Post XRef:
YLAD - You're Last [WP7] About Dialog

PAARC (Phone as a Remote Control) - A library for WP7 & Desktop that lets the two easily connect... (Think "Writing a WP7 app that connects to and "controls" a Desktop app...

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