The Visual Style Builder is a great tool. Unfortunately it has many issues and results in many hours of "fiddling", testing and repeat, to get a control to appear properly (based on what is desired). Complicated controls like GridView require a lot of patience. This is especially true when upgrading to a new release. New controls are created, old controls obsoleted, and properties and values change.
IT makes perfect sense that the tools would not be the top priority and I am ready to just start editing the xml files.
So, I am wondering if there is a document that lists the elements, and attributes in the control and repository xml files. Some are self explanatory, but others are not. For example the XmlRepositoryItem Capacity key. At first I thought it meant the maximum, number of elements that can be defined for the Item Type, but then I saw different values for the same Item Type.
What would really be nice is, if there is a fairly simple way to determine all of the properties and Visual States for a control.
This may already exist and I just haven't found it.
Thanks
3 Answers, 1 is accepted
Thank you for your feedback.
We do not provide detailed documentation about the elements, attributes and states of a control as actually Visual Style Builder is the tool that has to save your efforts to try to tweak these settings manually in xml. When exposing an element or a state in Visual Style Builder we are trying to put a name as descriptive as possible in order to allow you to easily understand which element is expected to affect what in the big picture. Generally speaking, we have tried to create repository items that explain themselves as well, but it seems that we have some gaps in this direction which we will be amending in future.
I would recommend taking look at our Primitives documentation as these primitives build up the look of RadControls (hence you can encounter them in VSB) and the articles will give you a notion of what these primitives expose as an API. Another element (and its derivatives) used widely in some controls (RadGridView, RadPageView) is LightVisualElement. This element combines the features of several primitives - it can display border, fill, text and image at once.
I want to encourage you to ask us any questions that you may have while working with Visual Style Builder. This will allow us to think of some improvements if such can be implemented. I suppose that you have already got acquainted with our Visual Style Builder documentation. In addition to it, you can take a look at our Visual Style Builder video series that demonstrates styling various RadControls.
Let us know if you have additional questions.
Nikolay
the Telerik team
Rank 1
Thanks for your response and tips to help understand the primitives. Basically we have one theme that we have been using and once it's complete (controls that we use) it usually doesn't need to be modified anymore. However, as I mentioned, sometimes it is required when upgrading to a new release of the controls. What I have found to be very helpful is to open two Visual Style Builders side by side. One with our theme and the other with a theme from the current release version. Also, I do have to say that the Spy is helpful to identify a specific element. For example I didn't realize that the GridViewRowCheckBox uses the actual CheckBox control. So some changes need to be done on that control. The Spy tool pointed this out for me.
Your team has been very responsive and helpful. I appreciate that you must prioritize your development, but at the same time, you point me in the right direction or find a work-around.
I can't remember if I posted this so I'll mention it here. It would be very helpful if the GridViewHyperLink control had a "row is selected" state.
Thanks again.
Mike
edit: My mistake, I did find the "Row Selected" State for the GridViewHyperLink column. I was looking in the wrong place. :)
Thank you for your kind words and for sharing your experience with the community.
Once again, feel free to contact us should you have further questions.
Nikolay
the Telerik team