14

I was looking for scenario-like wizard (with Next/Back buttons) that I can use in a Windows application under .NET 3.5. Is there any wizard control provided by Microsoft in .NET Framework 3.5?

Red Swan
  • 15,157
  • 43
  • 156
  • 238

1 Answers1

21

No, Microsoft does not provide a ready-made wizard control as part of the .NET Framework. You will need to build your own.

There are several samples available on the web that can help get you started:


Of course, as you can see, the majority of those samples implement the old Wizard 97 interface, rather than the new Aero Wizards (found in Windows Vista and 7). I've seen one of those on Code Project, too:

But perhaps the best implementation I've seen is found in the Windows Forms Aero library, available for download here on CodePlex. The Aero Wizard .NET Library is another great option, also on CodePlex.

Both of those are great looking, well-designed wizard controls, but neither of them will work properly on Windows XP (which doesn't support the Aero theme). The biggest problem you'll run into is ensuring that your implementation is fully backward-compatible, properly reverting to the Wizard 97 style when running on a version of Windows prior to Vista. I haven't seen a control that gets this right posted online yet.


If spending money on a third-party control is an option, you might look into XtraWizard by Devexpress or the Wizard Framework by Divelements.


But no matter which route you choose, I highly recommend following Microsoft's Wizard guidelines.

BetaKeja
  • 442
  • 2
  • 16
Cody Gray - on strike
  • 239,200
  • 50
  • 490
  • 574
  • @Cody Gray: thanks this is very help full for me. let say i want to build the wizard control that would support for dynamically creation of n - number of wizards on the fly. so which will better option.? also, need to now about Aero Wizard .NET Library, is this free and full version. can i use it for full development purpose, i mean, will is work properly without any crash at the end ? – Red Swan Feb 10 '11 at 06:55
  • @Lalit: Yes, all the links I gave (except for the third-party controls at the bottom) are full versions and can be used in any project of your choice. To my knowledge, there are no restrictions on their use even for commercial apps. I'm not sure what you mean, though, by "dynamically creation of n - number wizards on the fly". You can show as many copies of the same wizard on the screen as you want, but if you want to built *different* wizards at run-time, you would do that just like you'd build different forms. You would need to add controls and set their properties in code. – Cody Gray - on strike Feb 10 '11 at 06:58
  • @ Cody Gray: thanks again for valuable guidance. also can i edit its source code an per my convenience ? i mean is that open source and able to extend its scope in development? – Red Swan Feb 10 '11 at 07:04
  • @Lalit: Yes, I'm almost positive that all of those projects are open source. There should be something listed on the relevant web page describing their license, but more often than not, code you find online is released to the public domain and free for you to modify. In particular, the two hosted on CodePlex are indeed open source and you can modify at will. I frequently build custom controls by taking bits and pieces from samples I find online. If you found my answer useful, please feel free to accept it by clicking the hollow checkmark on the left-hand side. Best of luck! – Cody Gray - on strike Feb 11 '11 at 06:03
  • I appreciate that, you are trying to fulfilling my answers. but as i found in these controls we can not create wizards on the fly. means let say i want to get number of Questions form the database ( i don't know how many they are in numbers , may be 100 or more. this is varies as per situation). and i want to create the number of wizard pages (same like paging in the grid). and want to populate each question on each wizard page. then what i have to do ? these links i found limitation over the number of wizard pages in side wizard control. how can i achieve this scenario. please guide. – Red Swan Feb 11 '11 at 06:11
  • @Lalit: You're not going to find any control that does that for you. The same way you have to write code to generate forms on the fly in WinForms, you'll have to do the same for a wizard control. There just isn't any built-in functionality for automatically generating a form (of which a "wizard" is just a special case). I haven't found any limitations on the number of pages inside the wizard, but I certainly haven't tried over 100. You could certainly write the code yourself that generates the pages from information specified in the constructor, but there's no ready-made control that does that – Cody Gray - on strike Feb 11 '11 at 06:15
  • ok thanks again fro quick reply, I was just looking for such control if available , so that I should not spend my time over it...hushhh! so i think i have go in deep to resolve this again. – Red Swan Feb 11 '11 at 06:19