HtmlPanel - rich text on the device

[agraham]

It has long been a problem that a RichTextBox has not been available on devices so that producing coloured and formatted text has been a problem. The only work around for Basic4ppc has been to use a WebBrowser but that is not always ideal.

I have looked around many times but have not found a non-commercial solution but at long last I have stumbled upon some code written in the early days of .NET 1.0 that is worth building upon.

This is very much an initial taster version. I have a lot more work to do to expose more functionality but note that you should be able to assign a ContextMenu to it so overcoming one of the WebBrowser shortcomings. Suggestions for improvement are welcome.

No manual yet but demo included. It should work on .NET 1.0 and later on both device and desktop.

EDIT: Improved version 0.2 posted.

EDIT: Version 1.0 posted with help and demo. See post #13.

EDIT: Version 1.1 posted. See post #16.

EDIT: Version 1.2 posted. See post #20.

EDIT: Version 1.3 posted. See post #21.

EDIT: Version 1.4 posted. This version is AutoScale aware. See post #30.

EDIT: Version 1.5 posted. See post #48.

[Byak@]

wow!big thanks agraham!it is very good!
but maybe it's real with this control-
1)selecting text(and params selectStart and select Length)
2)scroll this control for comand(for example pageup,pagedown)
3)place event mouseup/down/move to this control
4)know position of scrollbar

[agraham]

Originally Posted by Byak@

selecting text(and params selectStart and select Length)

It isn't possible to select text using the mouse. The demo shows that you can detect the block of text that was clicked but that's as close as you will get to selecting text.

scroll this control for comand(for example pageup,pagedown)

The scrollbar LargeChange properties give you the value in pixels for a page distance.

place event mouseup/down/move to this control

Mouse and ScrollBar events added.

know position of scrollbar

Get and set ScrollBar values added together with Max value which is the length in pixels of the rendered bitmap

[Byak@]

thanks agraham)but maybe it is real to add selecting text? or another way for it?

[agraham]

Originally Posted by Byak@

real

I think it's about time we sorted out what you mean by "is it real" as you use it a lot but I don't know really what you mean Do you mean "is it possible" or "does it exist"?

[Byak@]

in this case "does it exist" =)

[moster67]

Graham,

Great stuff by you as usual. You're my hero ! I will look forward to following the progress of this control.

I read somewhere that a few years (versions back) ago, Microsoft actually released a RichTextBox for Windows Mobile in a beta-release of VS (or CF.NET) but it was later abandoned.

rgds,
moster67

[N1c0_ds]

It might just be me, but I think there is a problem at display. There is a ~13 pixels wide space (scrollbar space?) where no text is displayed. This means there is sometimes a missing letter at the end of the panel.

[agraham]

It is the scrollbar space but that's not why you are missing characters. It is presently riddled with obscure bugs, hence the 0.x versioning and lack of help. I'm wringing them out at the moment. Next version in a day or so.

[N1c0_ds]

Originally Posted by agraham

It is the scrollbar space but that's not why you are missing characters. It is presently riddled with obscure bugs, hence the 0.x versioning and lack of help. I'm wringing them out at the moment. Next version in a day or so.

Great! Looking forward to include it in Gecko ^_^