The User Experience
ClientUI enables you to take full advantage of the underlying power of the platform
and focuses on helping you deliver rich and scalable application architecture in
less time. The vast array of UI controls in ClientUI is designed for impressive
visual development experience with extended design-time support on Microsoft Visual
Studio 2010 and Expression Blend 4.
Visual Focus
The input and button controls in ClientUI feature visual keyboard focus, similar
to Windows OS and WPF standards. This is one of the most fundamental usability features
that help users easily spot the focus of primary input device during data entry
process. Users can use TAB and SHIFT+TAB key to move between input elements, buttons,
and more. Learn more.
Keyboard Navigation
Although Silverlight has provided basic keyboard navigation functionality, ClientUI
improves it further by adding a more advanced keyboard navigation support to its
essential UI controls. A sophisticated focus and input management feature is also
implemented in certain advanced controls such as dropdown button, split button,
toolbar button, and more. Users can use the TAB key to focus on a dropdown element
and arrow key to expand the dropdown and move between selections. When interacting
with the toolbar, you can use the arrow key to move between menu items and sub menus,
press the ESC key to hide the menu and press ESC key again to return the focus to
the previously selected element. Learn more.
Analog Clock Input
ClientUI is a pioneering solution, introducing an engaging way to input time value.
Simulating an analog clock input, ClientUI’s UXClock allows user to visually interact
with the hour and minute hands. Conforming to ISO 9241 standards, you can use
TAB key to navigate between both hands, and use Up or Down arrow key to increase or decrease
the value of the focused hand. Additionally, use CTRL + Click to move the hour and
minute hands exactly. Slide the AM/PM to change the value as desired.
Access Key
Access key is an all-time favorite feature. It lets users to quickly accessing a
specific command with combination of keystrokes, for instance, pressing CTRL+S to
execute the save command. Thanks to the solid focus scope implementation, the access
key in menu bar is consistently processed when the current focus is within the same
focus scope as the menu bar. Learn more.
Default Command and Visual Feedback
ClientUI also adds several exciting features related to commanding, such as default
command focus and visual feedback for Silverlight platform. A default command is
the pre focused element executed as user press Enter key within the form. Similar
to most platform-standard, the default command is subtly animated to provide a visual
hint. Learn more.
Input Modality
Input modality is one of the most fundamental UI architecture that has been long
adopted by popular platforms such as Windows and Mac. The most common implementation
of input modality can be often found in dialog boxes, menu, and popup. When the
UI requires a sole user focus, the UI routes all input events to that particular
UI elements allowing users to easily focus on a specific single task, for example,
when selecting a command from a menu, the user input is modal to the menu element.
Things become more complicated when there are multiple UIs that require user focus.
In this case, the precedence of modality should be applied to determine which input
should be first processed. This scenario can often be found in multiple window interface
applications where a window should be less modal than the task bar UI, and the task
bar UI should be less modal than menu or popup. Learn more.
Text Search
Text search is an essential usability feature implemented in several ClientUI controls
like UXListBox and UXComboBox. The text search feature is sophisticatedly implemented
according to the user experience standards. It supports smart item searching behavior
based on multiple characters captured by keyboard. The continuous keystroke within
a latency of 0.98s (a standard for typing latency defined in ISO Standards 9241)
will be added to the text search which will be used to query the items in the control.
This allows users to access the information presented by the control more intuitively.
Learn more.
Disabled and Busy State Visual Indicator
Visual hint is an important feature to notify user on the current system or application
state. For example, using a progress bar in a form-filling scenario enables user
to be aware of the saving. Without proper indication, user can be easily misled
with the current state of a command. ClientUI includes a thoughtfully engineered
visual hint for disabled and busy state feature. Learn more.
Professional Aero Theme
All ClientUI controls are designed with modern, professional-looking Aero-style
theme, allowing you to create impressive Silverlight and WPF applications without
spending much time and effort for styling and templating. Learn more about the user experience
features implemented in ClientUI.