Well, I'm finally feature-complete on my up-and-coming ToolPanel Control Suite. No, it's not available for download JUST yet.... (And yes, feature creep has taken its toll to a decent extent, but I think that has made for an outstanding product in the end.)
At left is a screenshot of the 'Suite' of controls that will be available. It doesn't look like much, but you'll notice that there's a control called the DynamicToolPanel. That's a control that you drop on your webform, and then tell it which control to 'Panel' (with an interface similar to how you tell a validator which control to validate). So, in the end you'll be able to 'Panel' any control on your page... which is quite spiffy.
Some highlights Well, skinning is the bomb... but you'll have to see that in action rather than take my work on it. I've shown a skin in my preview page.
Another killer aspect of the Dynamic ToolPanel is that you can use it to put ToolPanel's on the validation messages that your validators throw out.... i.e. so that if you have a validation error message you don't have to worry about cramming ALL of the explanation into the validator message, you can instead put detailed instructions into a ToolPanel that activates when somebody mouses over the validation error message.
Sadly, I'm QUITE burned out on this control right at the moment so I probably won't make my end of April release date. Right now I'm just tweaking the docs (they're a major drag)... once I'm done with that I'll start work on a really quick video that provides an overview of how the controls work. From there I'll build a skins gallery as well as some other info and throw these controls up on my site...
Sounds freaking ambitious... and as a lucky sneak-peaker I can attest that it is. This thing is sweet.
Posted by: Carson | April 28, 2004 at 06:06 PM