MS CRM user interface design

[PontiMax]

Hi,

in my opinion the user interface designers of the
Microsoft CRM solution have done a very good job. But I'm
afraid I don't understand how certain elements of that
design were implemented...

Take the activities view for example (
http://www.crmresultants.nl/tumbs/groot/8-case-activity-
history.gif):
- How did they embed those vertical separators in the
header row (those ones who separate 'Activity
Subject', 'Type', and 'Status')? Do they use a custom grid
control for this purpose?
- And does anybody know how certain items in the grid may
be selected? By double-clicking the corresponding row? By
clicking on the arrow?

Thanks,
PontiMax

 

[Morgan]

If I'm not mistaken, the CRM solution uses WinForms & Remoting (or some
variation of it), not ASP.Net.

--Morgan

 

[Jiho Han]

MSCRM at the moment is completely an ASP.NET affair if you don't count the
outlook client.

The grids that are used in the CRM are all custom generated and not really a
server control in the traditional sense.

 

[Shawn B.]

It is ASP.NET. When you install, look at the files it uses, there are many
*.aspx mostly.

The grid lines are actually easy to implement. For the left td, and the
right td cell, and apply the following styles:

BORDER-RIGHT: solid 1px gray
BORDER-LEFT: solid 1px lightgray

There is also a highlight style for the border that could help out in this
case but I doubt it.

Also, I do not think this is a "table" per se. But three tables. You
cannot have a scrolling tbody (unless MS is using some undocumented property
of the DOM -- I wouldn't put it past them). So do have the header spanning
the top, with the middle part being scrollable within the width of where the
header and footer span, and the footer the same as the header... you have to
do some special things.

If this is indeed HTML (and I think it is). You have to "know" the width of
each coloumn in the header, and then when rendering the scrolling div/span
that will appear to be the body of the table, you set the columns the same
width. There are other things to do if the widths aren't known until the
page is rendered. I won't describe that here.

But in all, I think it would be very easy to imitate the UI of MSCRM.


Thanks,
Shawn