Introduction
Aspose.Grid.Web is supplied with a special utility to control its design and some other features. This utility is named as Aspose.Grid.Web Designer. Developers cannot only design the look & feel of their Grid but also control other features like managing worksheets, hyperlinks etc. using Aspose.Grid.Web Designer. This designing utility can help developers a lot to increase their productivity. In this topic, we will provide an overview of the usage of Aspose.Grid.Web Designer.
Using Aspose.Grid.Web Designer
In order to use Aspose.Grid.Web Designer, developers may activate it in two ways that is either using Start menu (by selecting Start | Programs | Aspose.Grid | Utilities | Aspose.Grid.Web Designer option from the menu) or using Visual Studio.NET IDE. In VS.NET, right click on the Aspose.Grid.Web control in a Web Form and then select Aspose.Grid.Web Designer... option from the popup menu as shown in the figure below:
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Figure: Selecting Aspose.Grid.Web Designer... option from popup menu
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Using any one of the two ways (explained above to activiate Aspose.Grid.Web Designer), Aspose.Grid.Web Designer will be activiated and displayed as shown below in the figure:
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Figure: Aspose.Grid.Web Designer
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From the above figure, you can notice a button: Actions.... If you click this button then a small menu would be popped up before you to take some actions on the Grid as shown below in the figure:
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Figure: Clicking Actions... button
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Using this Actions... menu, developers can open and save Excel, Style or AGW (Aspose.Grid.Web) files into the Grid instantly. Moreover, it's also possible to clear all worksheets from the Grid. Aspose.Grid.Web Designer dialog is composed of four tabs as follows:
- Style
- Options
- Worksheets
- Hyperlinks
Let's discuss the features of each tab one by one.
Specifying Grid Style
Using Style tab, developers can apply some cosmetics on their Grid controls by changing the styles and colors of different parts of the Grid. Aspose.Grid.Web offers some Preset Styles but develpers can also create their own Custom style. To apply a Preset Style on the Grid, developers can Select A Preset Style as shown below in the figure:
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Figure: Selecting a Preset Style
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There are many Preset Styles supported by Aspose.Grid.Web that include the following:
- Standard
- Colorful1
- Colorful2
- Professional1
- Professional2
- Traditional1
- Traditional2
Let's select a Preset Style. In our case, we selected Traditional1 style, which is instantly applied on the Grid as shown below in the figure:
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Figure: Traditional1 style applied on Grid
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To create a Custom style, developers can select Custom option from the Preset Styles and configure style properties like Font, Colors, Borders etc. using TreeView Box (on right side) according to their own desires.
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Figure: Creating a Custom style for the Grid
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Developers can also save their Grid Styles as style files, which are infact XML based files and can be loaded any time once saved. Grid style can be saved using Save To Style File... option of the popup menu (that appears when Actions... button is clicked) in Asopse.Grid.Web Designer dialog.
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Figure: Saving Grid style as a Style File
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NOTE: The saved style file can be re-used with Aspose.Grid.Web control anytime by setting its CustomStyleFileName property to the path of this style file.
Setting Grid Options
Options tab contains several options for the Grid that can be used by developers to control the behavior of Aspose.Grid.Web control. These options are provided as CheckBoxes, which can be Checked or UnChecked by developers to turn them On or Off for the Grid respectively as shown below in the figure:
Moreover, developers can configure other utility options of the Aspose.Grid.Web control like setting the minimum and maximum number of rows & columns and page size.
Managing Worksheets
Aspose.Grid.Web Designer also contains Worksheets tab that allows developers to Add, Remove or Rename their worksheets in the Grid control as shown below in the figure:
Managing Hyperlinks
Developers can also Create or Remove hyperlinks from the cells of a worksheet. It is also possible to use images instead of text for creating these hyperlinks. After you finish working with Aspose.Grid.Web Designer, you can click OK button as shown below in the figure:
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Figure: Clicking OK button to finish working with Aspose.Grid.Web Designer
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After we click OK button, Aspose.Grid.Web Designer is closed and we can see that all of our formatting settings (that we defined using Aspose.Grid.Web Designer) are applied on the Grid control embedded in our Web Form as shown below in the figure:
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Figure: Formatting settings applied on Aspose.Grid.Web control
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