C# Chat - how to show messages decently?

Question

im making a Chat client and server.. everything was for the best, thread, connections, all ok.

But now my C# program got a problem.. ..i searched for hours and days without solution

Its my problem:

I need to replace the (classic) textbox for reading, with something that supports color, smile, font, maybe interactive features.

RichTextBox? No GIF support or interactive items

i like fastcoloredtextbox but cant change font or font-size (it's possible but does not work well) btw not right for me

I would use a Browser, which allows me to use html, css and javascript, so to solve all my problems..

Why i cant?

Geckofx? Don't work [!?] :|

Standard WebBrowser suck. I had Windows 8, but still IE9 (wtf?).

Awesomium? It's ok but can't modify the document... should i create a blank html page and insert all through javascript?

any solution? what do you suggest?

[it's a desktop app, i'm using vs2010]

thanks

EDIT: Got a solution.

WebSockets is the way..! :3

WebBrowser seems to be the best but i don't know how you can handle win 8 issue. — aliassce, Mar 27 '13 at 19:51
@Thetrigger because winforms is a dinosaur, and doesnt' support anything. You will not get a `decent` UI from winforms. I can imitate the behavior of Windows Live Messenger with a simple WPF ListBox and a couple of DataTemplates. winforms doesn't support that without resorting to a bunch of horrible hacks. — Federico Berasategui, Mar 27 '13 at 19:59
@TheTrigger the best advice I can give is `Use WPF and MVVM` - don't try to code the UI yourself. Create the proper data and `DataTemplates` and let the UI draw itself. It's much simpler that way. — Federico Berasategui, Mar 27 '13 at 20:21
You would want to use WPF because it has a lot of flexibility with the XAML. It will allow more flexibility in the overall design. — Greg, Mar 27 '13 at 20:30
I would go with some of the c# realtime frameworks if I was you,Xsockets.net , fleck or superwebsocket — Uffe, Apr 09 '13 at 20:55

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:52

I found a few links that could be useful if you want to use rtf:

But there are many possible answers to this question, so its really up to you how you want to display the messages.

1 Answers1