Skype for Business Graphical UI

Question

I am developing an addin for Skype For Business (SFB), by adding WPF application which pops up on SFB menu custom command. My goal is to create UI of wpf windows as much as possible, similar to the SFB window, and modify SFB controls. Does anybody knows if there is WPF UI theme similar to SFB window?

Answer 1

My guess is that you won't be able to exactly replicate the theme without Skype source. Perhaps someone has already tried to mimic the theme or maybe you will have to do so yourself.

If doing this yourself, you have a few options (and you may want to consider asking the UX StackExchange a question as well).

If you are insistent on copying the theme and you need to roll out your own, try this:

• Use color pickers to find out the values of Skype's colors. For gradients, you'll need to do this multiple times and adjust as necessary to make things look 'nice'.

• Make sure to look at all of the visual states for each type of control. Then make your application conform to the behavior. This includes mimicking hover , pressed , focused , normal , and other miscellaneous visual states. Re-implementing this section is going to be very tedious for mimicking all controls. Some controls do not have these states and have other states. Also, some controls will have different parts which need animation (eg progress bars).

  A quick search for 'wpf button visual states' gives the MSDN for creating a theme for a button: Button Styles and Templates

• Apply your theme to your controls. You may want to publish your work as this might be useful for other developers, but that is your decision. I've seen that finding themes can be quite challenging.

Otherwise you may wish to roll out a theme unique to your addins. From a UX perspective, this may indicate to the user that he/she is using one of your addins as opposed to the core Skype features. That would help in the branding of your software/addins.

Either way you choose, creating an complete theme is not a simple or easy task.