Simplify app deployment in .NET

HTML5 lets you deploy your applications everywhere

Embedding Windows Forms Applications in a WebBrowser using XBAP

In this post I will add references to other pages which do a great work on explaining how to use this approach to host a Windows Forms App inside a WebBrowser. 

The technique described here is a deployment solution to ease distribution of applications modernized from legacy technologies to Windows Forms, maybe using the Artinsoft\Mobilize.NET tools ;) 

NOTE: "This workaround of .NET Winforms to WPF and then hosting it in a browser isn't truly moving a Windows based application to a web based application. e.g. database calls will be made from inside the browser on the users PC to the database, not via the IIS server. Therefore this functionality is most useful if you have connected your Winforms UI to you back-end code using web services, then you can have a somewhat web based application."  

Adam Berent gives step by step instrutions:

http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/31429/Embedding-a-NET-WinForms-Application-in-an-Interne 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 1: Example of Windows Forms applications running inside FireFox browser using an XBAP wrapper.

 

Some details that are missing in this article are related to how to publish the application on IIS, and these can described as: 

1. Create a test Certificate within Visual Studio and sign it against the project.  

The following links provides information on how to sing the xbap with your own certificate. 

http://ahmadreza.com/2011/05/20/how-to-sign-the-xbap-with-your-own-certificate/ 
 

2. Within VS publish the application. 

3. Setup the MIME encoding on the IIS server. See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms752346.aspx 
 

4. Install the certificate on the Client PCs 

The certificate must be added in the trusted publisher and in the trusted root authority. If this is not done correctly you get the error 'Trust not granted' 

Embedding Windows Forms Applications in a WebBrowser using XBAP

In this post I will add references to other pages which do a great work on explaining how to use this approach to host a Windows Forms App inside a WebBrowser. 

The technique described here is a deployment solution to ease distribution of applications modernized from legacy technologies to Windows Forms, maybe using the Artinsoft\Mobilize.NET tools ;) 

NOTE: "This workaround of .NET Winforms to WPF and then hosting it in a browser isn't truly moving a Windows based application to a web based application. e.g. database calls will be made from inside the browser on the users PC to the database, not via the IIS server. Therefore this functionality is most useful if you have connected your Winforms UI to you back-end code using web services, then you can have a somewhat web based application."  

Adam Berent gives step by step instrutions:

http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/31429/Embedding-a-NET-WinForms-Application-in-an-Interne 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 1: Example of Windows Forms applications running inside FireFox browser using an XBAP wrapper.

 

Some details that are missing in this article are related to how to publish the application on IIS, and these can described as: 

1. Create a test Certificate within Visual Studio and sign it against the project.  

The following links provides information on how to sing the xbap with your own certificate. 

http://ahmadreza.com/2011/05/20/how-to-sign-the-xbap-with-your-own-certificate/ 
 

2. Within VS publish the application. 

3. Setup the MIME encoding on the IIS server. See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms752346.aspx 
 

4. Install the certificate on the Client PCs 

The certificate must be added in the trusted publisher and in the trusted root authority. If this is not done correctly you get the error 'Trust not granted' 

Silverlight as a mechanism for simplification of application deployment

Share Code between Silverlight, Winforms and even Metro: Portable Library Tools

Maybe you faced the situation where you had code that was to be used on your server side services and also on your silverlight clients. 
Having this situation required some tricks because Silverlight Class libraries could not be used on .NET projects and viceversa.
Common workarounds were to share files and use precompilation directive iack!!

Well VS 2011 has a concept called Portable Class Libraries which allow you to create class libraries that can be use in Windows Phone, Silverlight, .NET framework, etc.

And if you have VS 2010 you don't have to suffer. Just use the Portable Library Tools from from the VS Extensions and start sharing code (see this image form the VS Extensions site)

For more details about Portable Libraries check the MSDN documentation page: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg597391.aspx

Cannot uninstall Silverlight 4 and you want to install Silverlight 5

I faced this problem recently. I tried and tried but I got different error messages for uninstall Silverlight 4 SDK and I needed to upgrade to Silverlight 5.

So after a lot of tears and suffering I came across the Microsoft Fix it.

http://support.microsoft.com/mats/Program_Install_and_Uninstall

I runned this program and indicated that I wanted to uninstall Microsoft Silverlight 4 SDK and it was like magic!

It checked the registry, and fixed it, and then uninstalled the MS Silvelight 4 SDK.

After that I just download the new installer run it and everything work! Isn’t it something J

Printing BarCodes in Silverlight

Well I tought this was gonna be more difficult, but no. The Silverlight community is great and there are tons of
of  code out there.

So I found a great project in codeplex called obviously http://silverlightbarcode.codeplex.com/

And printing barcode with that library is a peace of cake.

Just do something like this:

private void button1_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
    var p = new PrintDocument();
    p.PrintPage += new EventHandler<PrintPageEventArgs>(p_PrintPage);
    p.Print("NuevoDocument");
}

void p_PrintPage(object sender, PrintPageEventArgs e)
{
    Canvas canvasBarCode = new Canvas();
    canvasBarCode.Width = 200;
    canvasBarCode.Height = 200;
    Me.BarcodeSoftware.Barcode.Barcodes barcode = 
           new Me.BarcodeSoftware.Barcode.Barcodes();
    barcode.BarcodeType =        
                  Me.BarcodeSoftware.Barcode.Barcodes.BarcodeEnum.Code39;
    barcode.Data = "123456";
    barcode.encode();
    string encodedData = barcode.EncodedData;
    //if you want to put the barcode number 
        // add a label to canvas and set text to barcode.HumanText;

    int encodedLength = 0;
    for (int x = 0; x < encodedData.Length; x++)
    {
        if (encodedData[x] == 't')
            encodedLength++;
        else if (encodedData[x] == 'w')
            encodedLength = encodedLength + 3;
    }

    float barWidth = (float)(canvasBarCode.Width / encodedLength);

    if (barWidth < 1) barWidth = 1;
    float thickWidth = barWidth * 3;
    double incrementWidth = 0;

    int swing = 0;
    for (int x = 0; x < encodedData.Length; x++)
    {
        Brush brush;
        if (swing == 0)
            brush = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Black);
        else
            brush = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.White);

        if (encodedData[x] == 't')
        {
            Rectangle r = new Rectangle();
            r.Fill = brush;
            r.Width = barWidth;
            r.Height = canvasBarCode.Height;
            r.SetValue(Canvas.LeftProperty, incrementWidth);
            r.SetValue(Canvas.TopProperty, 0.0);
            canvasBarCode.Children.Add(r);
            incrementWidth = incrementWidth + ((barWidth));
        }
        else if (encodedData[x] == 'w')
        {
            Rectangle r = new Rectangle();
            r.Fill = brush;
            r.Width = 3 * barWidth;
            r.Height = canvasBarCode.Height;
            r.SetValue(Canvas.LeftProperty, incrementWidth);
            r.SetValue(Canvas.TopProperty, 0.0);
            canvasBarCode.Children.Add(r);
            incrementWidth = incrementWidth + (3 * (barWidth));
        }

        if (swing == 0)
           swing = 1;
        else
           swing = 0;
    }
    e.PageVisual = canvasBarCode;
    e.HasMorePages = false;

}

Printing BarCodes in Silverlight

Well I tought this was gonna be more difficult, but no. The Silverlight community is great and there are tons of
of  code out there.

So I found a great project in codeplex called obviously http://silverlightbarcode.codeplex.com/

And printing barcode with that library is a peace of cake.

Just do something like this:

private void button1_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
    var p = new PrintDocument();
    p.PrintPage += new EventHandler<PrintPageEventArgs>(p_PrintPage);
    p.Print("NuevoDocument");
}

void p_PrintPage(object sender, PrintPageEventArgs e)
{
    Canvas canvasBarCode = new Canvas();
    canvasBarCode.Width = 200;
    canvasBarCode.Height = 200;
    Me.BarcodeSoftware.Barcode.Barcodes barcode = 
           new Me.BarcodeSoftware.Barcode.Barcodes();
    barcode.BarcodeType =        
                  Me.BarcodeSoftware.Barcode.Barcodes.BarcodeEnum.Code39;
    barcode.Data = "123456";
    barcode.encode();
    string encodedData = barcode.EncodedData;
    //if you want to put the barcode number 
        // add a label to canvas and set text to barcode.HumanText;

    int encodedLength = 0;
    for (int x = 0; x < encodedData.Length; x++)
    {
        if (encodedData[x] == 't')
            encodedLength++;
        else if (encodedData[x] == 'w')
            encodedLength = encodedLength + 3;
    }

    float barWidth = (float)(canvasBarCode.Width / encodedLength);

    if (barWidth < 1) barWidth = 1;
    float thickWidth = barWidth * 3;
    double incrementWidth = 0;

    int swing = 0;
    for (int x = 0; x < encodedData.Length; x++)
    {
        Brush brush;
        if (swing == 0)
            brush = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Black);
        else
            brush = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.White);

        if (encodedData[x] == 't')
        {
            Rectangle r = new Rectangle();
            r.Fill = brush;
            r.Width = barWidth;
            r.Height = canvasBarCode.Height;
            r.SetValue(Canvas.LeftProperty, incrementWidth);
            r.SetValue(Canvas.TopProperty, 0.0);
            canvasBarCode.Children.Add(r);
            incrementWidth = incrementWidth + ((barWidth));
        }
        else if (encodedData[x] == 'w')
        {
            Rectangle r = new Rectangle();
            r.Fill = brush;
            r.Width = 3 * barWidth;
            r.Height = canvasBarCode.Height;
            r.SetValue(Canvas.LeftProperty, incrementWidth);
            r.SetValue(Canvas.TopProperty, 0.0);
            canvasBarCode.Children.Add(r);
            incrementWidth = incrementWidth + (3 * (barWidth));
        }

        if (swing == 0)
           swing = 1;
        else
           swing = 0;
    }
    e.PageVisual = canvasBarCode;
    e.HasMorePages = false;

}

Printing BarCodes in Silverlight

Well I tought this was gonna be more difficult, but no. The Silverlight community is great and there are tons of
of  code out there.

So I found a great project in codeplex called obviously http://silverlightbarcode.codeplex.com/

And printing barcode with that library is a peace of cake.

Just do something like this:

private void button1_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
    var p = new PrintDocument();
    p.PrintPage += new EventHandler<PrintPageEventArgs>(p_PrintPage);
    p.Print("NuevoDocument");
}

void p_PrintPage(object sender, PrintPageEventArgs e)
{
    Canvas canvasBarCode = new Canvas();
    canvasBarCode.Width = 200;
    canvasBarCode.Height = 200;
    Me.BarcodeSoftware.Barcode.Barcodes barcode = 
           new Me.BarcodeSoftware.Barcode.Barcodes();
    barcode.BarcodeType =        
                  Me.BarcodeSoftware.Barcode.Barcodes.BarcodeEnum.Code39;
    barcode.Data = "123456";
    barcode.encode();
    string encodedData = barcode.EncodedData;
    //if you want to put the barcode number 
        // add a label to canvas and set text to barcode.HumanText;

    int encodedLength = 0;
    for (int x = 0; x < encodedData.Length; x++)
    {
        if (encodedData[x] == 't')
            encodedLength++;
        else if (encodedData[x] == 'w')
            encodedLength = encodedLength + 3;
    }

    float barWidth = (float)(canvasBarCode.Width / encodedLength);

    if (barWidth < 1) barWidth = 1;
    float thickWidth = barWidth * 3;
    double incrementWidth = 0;

    int swing = 0;
    for (int x = 0; x < encodedData.Length; x++)
    {
        Brush brush;
        if (swing == 0)
            brush = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Black);
        else
            brush = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.White);

        if (encodedData[x] == 't')
        {
            Rectangle r = new Rectangle();
            r.Fill = brush;
            r.Width = barWidth;
            r.Height = canvasBarCode.Height;
            r.SetValue(Canvas.LeftProperty, incrementWidth);
            r.SetValue(Canvas.TopProperty, 0.0);
            canvasBarCode.Children.Add(r);
            incrementWidth = incrementWidth + ((barWidth));
        }
        else if (encodedData[x] == 'w')
        {
            Rectangle r = new Rectangle();
            r.Fill = brush;
            r.Width = 3 * barWidth;
            r.Height = canvasBarCode.Height;
            r.SetValue(Canvas.LeftProperty, incrementWidth);
            r.SetValue(Canvas.TopProperty, 0.0);
            canvasBarCode.Children.Add(r);
            incrementWidth = incrementWidth + (3 * (barWidth));
        }

        if (swing == 0)
           swing = 1;
        else
           swing = 0;
    }
    e.PageVisual = canvasBarCode;
    e.HasMorePages = false;

}