Here's what I am trying to accomplish - To create an MDI application in WPF, which can host child web applications. I am using WPF webbrowser control to render web applications. WPF inherently doesn't seem to support MDI applications, so after a bit of searching, I found this project, which uses UI controls to simulate windows and manages them inside a WPF canvas. This approach seems to work reasonably well until I start adding webbrowser control object as an MDI child.
When I add webbrowser control as an MDI child, it always appears on top of other WPF elements including other MDI child controls (as shown below). From what I understand, webbrowser control always appears on top of any other WPF object except for window (and popup). Assuming that's true, I think I need to use actual WPF window to avoid overlapping issue.
The only solution i can think of right now is to wrap WPF window inside an HwndHost object and then add that as an MDI child. However it appears that a child window cannot have title bar. That means that i need to have a window that has a dummy title bar area (just like actual window title bar) and actual content area (which will show webbrowser control) as shown below (Red border is HwndHost object).
This approach seems to solve the overlapping issue. The next thing i need to try is to let users click on the dummy title bar and drag the MDI window inside the canvas element.
Questions -
Is my understanding about WPF webbrowser control overlapping behavior right? If not, what am i missing?
Is the second approach a step in right direction for accomplishing what i want? If yes, how do i implement the drag behavior for HwndHost?
Is there any other alternate solution i can try?
Note:
Although many consider MDI not an elegant solution, I do not have a choice. (We tried alternate solutions like tabbed windows/dockable
windows, but were not well received)
I am quite new to interop programming, and do not understand the
concepts well. Please correct me if i am misunderstanding things.
Thanks!
Related
In my VSTO projects (Office 2007 / 2010) I would like to use a small popup control (think Tooltip like features; fade animation and mouse interaction).
I would prefer to use WPF. If I were to do this in WPF I would create a custom Popup Control.
In VSTO, as far as I understand it, I must use a WPF window and then have 2 options, either I put this window in a Windows Form Container or I get the Hwnd of my office app and I add this Hwnd to the Owner property of a WPF Window. Am I correct here?
Creating a whole window, animating it on and off the screen etc to look like a ToolTip seems to be overkill.
So my question is how should I do this. I would prefer WPF.
I don't know if this would work but my first thought is to build a very tiny WPF window which is transparent and start it with the Office App. I can then build a Popup Control (which is a child of this tiny window) which I show and not show at a mouse position. Pretty sure a popup can appear outside the bounds of its parent window.
Just wanted to tidy up my own question with what I did. In the VSTO addin project I added a reference to WindowsBase, PresentationFramework and presentation core.
And then I just follow any tutorial or example that adds a WPF Popup. By popup I mean a System.Windows.Controls.Primitives.Popup. For the Placement I used PlacementMode.Absolute and then used a window point to set its position.
This pretty much answers my question. Of course this popup is literally floating above your office window so you will need to make sure that you control it for example if the office window moves, is minimized and the like.
I currently have LibVLC setup with a C# project and it uses a Panel to output the video stream. As WPF is better suited for some GUI options I want to implement, I have now switched my project over to it. However, I noticed that WPF Controls don't have handles like C# controls do.
I have found these...
http://wpfmediakit.codeplex.com/
http://videorendererelement.codeplex.com
However I am new to WPF and have no idea how to actually integrate them. What would be the best approach to output the video streams from LibVlC in WPF?
I managed to resolve this by using a WindowsFormsHost control and just use a Panel as I was doing previously in my Win Forms application. Still seems that using something else native to WPF would be preferable, but for now this is working fine.
I'm afraid that's not possible...
Since WPF controls are not Win32 controls behind the scenes (the MS specific HWND or the more general HANDLE), like most WinForms controls are, providing a HANDLE to libvlc for rendering is not possible or not easy.
See here
All WPF elements on the screen are ultimately backed by a HWND. When you create a WPF Window, WPF creates a top-level HWND, and uses an HwndSource to put the Window and its WPF content inside the HWND. The rest of your WPF content in the application shares that singular HWND. An exception is menus, combo box drop downs, and other pop-ups. These elements create their own top-level window, which is why a WPF menu can potentially go past the edge of the window HWND that contains it.
You could try to use a Window and attempt to get its Handle like this:
IntPtr windowHandle = new WindowInteropHelper(windowInstance).Handle
Then pass this handle to libvlc. Remember to obtain this handle no sooner than inside the Loaded event of the window, see here
But this will limit you to using a top level Window control, which doesn't seem to be what you want.
Am looking to implement a detach and popup UI behaviour in my applcation.
It basically means that I will be displaying say, a stackpanel with lot elements on the right side of my page. And on a button click, I want the stackpanel part to popup(removing its allocated space in the UI) and should be able to move it above the underlying wpf UI.
What am trying to do is that remove the stackpanel from its parent grid on button click and add it as the child of wpf popup control. But I am facing some issues doing this way. However I just want to know whether I am doing it in the correct way or do anyone have a good alternative for implementing this pin out functionality am specified here?
Thanks,
Vinsdeon
How about using this kinda nice control, AvalonDock, which is simulating Visual Studio's dockable components behaviors?
http://avalondock.codeplex.com/
It will spare you the pain of developing such a specific functionality, and will have a great reusability anyway
I'm creating a HUD window for inspecting biz entities in my WinForms application.
I wanted to have a completely different style of window (minimize the content area and showing only the TitleBar, no system buttons, etc) so I created a WPF application for this.
The problem is that I want this Window to 'live' inside my WinForms application. I can't just add the WPF as an OwnedForm or set the main Form as the Owner of the WPF window.
So, how can achive this?
EDIT: Thanks to pst I found the answer. Here is the snippet:
System.Windows.Forms.Integration.ElementHost.EnableModelessKeyboardInterop(_inspector);
WindowInteropHelper inspectorHelper = new WindowInteropHelper(_inspector);
inspectorHelper.Owner = this.Handle;
_inspector.Show();
A WPF Window has a Win32-window handle/context.
See WindowInteropHelper. You can use this with Win32 (or perhaps there is WinForms support?) to set the owner window of the WPF Window. Be aware the handle does not exist until the "source initialized" (?) event.
However, using just WinForms, you may be able to customize the titlebar as much as you need (you can overwrite the drawing itself via Win32, and I think you lose all the control boxes without going this far).
There are lots of google results on this topic if you use the correct keywords.
Is there a way to host a WPF window inside another WPF window. I have a couple of somewhat complex forms in place. But now to simplify things I am trying to merge a few of them as tabpages inside one 'Dashboard' form.
Please note that I am not trying to host a Windows Form, but another WPF window
If you want tabpages, why not use a TabControl with UserControls inside ? If you need to transform one of these tabs to a floating window, just put the UserControl in a new Window...
Can I answer this question with another question; why would you not create them as controls rather than other WPF windows, that you want to host in the main WPF window?
a bit late on this, but I guess with WindowsForms interop you can put in WPF a WinForms control host and in that host put a WinForms control that hosts the handle of a WPF window
I think what you're asking for is MDI, Multiple Document Interface. Something like this might help.
Do note, however, that the MDI paradigm is largely shunned these days. There are usually better ways to achieve the same functionality.
I think you want to hosting contents of WPF Window1.xaml (page1.xaml) inside within another WPF Window.
Well...you can use Navigation. Instead running window1.xaml contents inside tab then you can work with your data inside Navigation. Navigation can run within WPF Window Application. You just design your form / UI in page1.xaml.
one another..MDI old and rusty. We want clear of top window nowadays.