The Two-Layered GUI Toolkit / News: Recent posts

The source code of the Two-Layered GUI Toolkit has just been migrated from SVN to Git. You can still access the code via the Code item in the toolbar as usual.

The latest pre-release, 1.1.0-alpha4, is ready for download!

As a major addition to the library, it features the new Simple Dialogs framework. Based on a simplified set of objects found in the TwoLayeredGUI.SimpleDialogs namespace, entire dialog boxes can be defined. UI-toolkit-specific factories will then build an interactive user interface based on that abstract definition.

Some of the highlights of the framework include:... read more

In preparation for the upcoming version 1.1.0, there have been a few pre-releases for you to look at the new features. These are mostly small courtesy methods in various classes that simplify working with the Two-Layered GUI Toolkit. Also, the WPF library now adds a few more reusable classes, such as an Int32Box and several command types.

Check out the wiki to read our new getting started tutorial!

There two versions of the tutorial, one focusing on the direct GUI-specific access, while the other one concentrates on using settings objects.

The Two-Layered GUI Toolkit Tutorial

The wiki contains a new tutorial on how to use the Two-Layered GUI Toolkit for creating applications with GUI-enabled plugins:

Read the tutorial

The first release of the Two-Layered GUI Toolkit called "stable" is out! Enjoy!

Version 0.9.1 of the Two-Layered GUI Toolkit has been released.

It features some small fixes and two notable new features:

• Dialog boxes (that means, message boxes, input boxes, and so on) can now have a headline text that should describe the purpose of the dialog box or message window in a short sentence.
• The options on the wizard page with radio buttons can now alternatively shown in a list box.

Starting at revision 608, dialog boxes of the Two-Layered GUI Toolkit (that is, anything built with the DialogBoxSettings class, message boxes, input boxes, and progress dialogs) can have a headline text.

The headline text is supposed to be a brief description of what the dialog box or message window is there for. With the current GUI bindings, it is shown in an enlarged font on top of the dialog box.

Version 0.9.0 of the Two-Layered GUI Toolkit has been released.

As you may have guessed by the leap of version numbers, the Two-Layered GUI Toolkit is approaching its first stable release.

The major novelty in this release are edit commands for input values. Each input value can now be enhanced with one or more commands that can invoke arbitrary dialogs, or just assign pre-defined default values. Furthermore, the FileSystem namespace now also defines a directory selection dialog.

If you have any trouble running the pre-compiled samples using Mono on Linux, in particular if you're running into this exception:

Unhandled Exception: System.MissingMethodException: Method not found: 'System.Type.op_Equality'

Try invoking Mono with this additional command line parameter:

--runtime=v4.0

Version 0.1.9 of the Two-Layered GUI Toolkit has been released!

The release contains some improvements and bugfixes, for example in the wizard framework. The flow view framework now uses double values instead of integers. The WPF binding has been partially reimplemented and brought to the same state of completion as the WinForms and the Gtk# bindings, and dialog contents panes in the WPF binding are now properly implemented as lookless templateable WPF controls.... read more

The Two-Layered GUI Toolkit website has been ported to the new SourceForge Allura interface. This means that the Trac instance used for the Two-Layered GUI Toolkit so far has been disabled.

Reasons for this change were the upcoming hosted apps retirement announced by SourceForge, as well as an increasingly good integration of the various tools and services provided by SourceForge in the new interface.... read more

The implementation of cross-AppDomain support for all classes proved very cumbersome and promised little benefits for the current goals of the library.

Therefore, I have decided to skip the cross AppDomain feature for the time being. The code will remain in the repository, of course, and if anyone is interested, the revision with the latest state of the AppDomain-related code is tagged as 0.1.8x-AppDomainProxies.

Those of you who are checking the SVN repository can have a first look at the latest new core feature of the Two-Layered GUI Toolkit: Full support for cross-AppDomain calls!

The new ProxyFactory class in the TwoLayeredGUI.Proxies namespace creates a marshallable object for many of the types found in the Two-Layered GUI Toolkit. By creating appropriate marshal-by-value proxies, it ensures that assemblies in other AppDomains cannot inject any code into your main AppDomain.... read more

Preview version 0.1.8 has just been released, featuring an improved validation concept for input values.

Preview version 0.1.6 includes the new Gtk# binding.

Those of you who have been following the SVN updates might have noticed a number of recent commits to the TwoLayeredGUI.WPF subproject. As the WPF implementation of the Two-Layered GUI Toolkit is nearing completion, I am happy to announce that WPF bindings will be included as of the next release.

I'm happy to welcome Mangal Rakesh Vankadaru in the Two-Layered GUI Toolkit team. He'll help with the upcoming WPF binding.

Version 0.1.5 has been released! The great novelty in this release is the wizard framework which makes creating typesafe wizard GUIs incredibly easy. Check out the samples!

For those among you who like to try bleeding-edge versions, check out the latest SVN revision! It contains demos for the brand-new wizard framework, including a demo that demonstrates how to edit a variable-length list in a wizard item by item. Enjoy!

The Two-Layered GUI Toolkit now has a Trac to manage work items. Check it out on http://twolayeredgui.sourceforge.net/ !

The newest version contains a flow layout framework. Look at the flow view sample in the example application.

Version 0.1.3 brings workarounds for several Mono-WinForms bugs, so the layout of message and input boxes should work with Mono now, as well. Please report any bugs you notice.

The newest preliminary release of the Two-Layered GUI Toolkit brings bugfixes, more overloads for frequently used methods as well as the brand-new progress dialog. Run the demo application to see how it looks like.

The new release contains a few bugfixes and updated help files.