Can I make a custom designer?

[kanaida]

After using the designer with my fingers, the property window and manually through code, I realized that this is taking me too long where I could have just dragged and dropped a few controls in less than 30 seconds in a visual designer that lets you use a mouse and has the help of snap grids etc...

I wanted to go ahead and just make my own designer for the layout, and some automatic code generation by simply using VS2010 as the designer and making regular windows forms, then translating all of the objects in my form directly into B4A code or .bal files by translating property values. After inspecting the .bal format in a little hex editor I noticed that it's probably some sort of serialized java object or something like that.

Is there any way I can create those files? perhaps a dll I can reference somewhere? If not, perhaps import some xml into the designer and let it make the bal file itself? I do like that I can visualize it right on the device, but I'm really trying to automate a lot of this stuff so I can make layouts in seconds and work on the program logic itself.

I know I can do this in pure code, but it would be nice to be able to make those .bal files directly.:sign0100:

 

[Brad]

I use the emulator in setting up the layouts then the actual device for fine tuning.

 

[kanaida]

lol... yeah, I guess I could try that. My fingers were really starting to hurt.

Thanks.


I still want to make a code-gen though, I'd love to just tell it here's the table, and let it design itself.

Oh yeah, forgot to ask. Is there a way to scroll the designer? I mean if I got like 10 boxes for stuff that someone needs to fill in, I know a scrollview helps. But how do I do that in the designer and not programmatically?

 

[nfordbscndrd]

Also, the B4A Designer *does* have snap grids; they just aren't visible. See Tools - Change Grid.