Find all objects and reapply current styles in Silverlight/XAML - silverlight

I'm working on customizing the appearance of a silverlight app on user-click and with some help have managed to swap out the Resource Dictionary and reapply a style to a button - where the reapplied style comes from the new Resource dictionary. This works but I need to make it scalable, since the whole app needs to be restyle with a single user click.
I reapply the style of the button with the following statement:
this.button1.Style = (Style)App.Current.Resources["ButtonTheme"];
The two things I want to do are:
Get a collection of all objects on the page (all buttons, text boxes everything)
Loop through them and reapply whatever is the object's current style (after swapping out the Resource Dictionary)
Help here greatly appreciated. Also, please tell me if there is a better approach altogether.
Many thanks

You need to remove the "old" theme from the resource dictionary and then merge in the new one
See this link and this

You don't need to do it manually.
Please take a look at this sample http://weblogs.asp.net/lduveau/archive/2010/05/31/dynamically-apply-and-change-theme-with-the-silverlight-toolkit.aspx

Related

Switch WPF UI controls dynamically

I need to develop a simple WPF application. In the UI window, There are Labels and Text Blocks towards the left and Buttons towards the right.
Figure 1
Based on a config setting (whether the user is left-handed or right-handed) I need to switch the controls, Buttons towards the left and Labels and Text Blocks towards the right.
Figure 2
Can you please recommend a good way to address this requirement?
Depends what the scope of the app is likely to be.
2 alternatives:
1)
I think it likely as an app grows that there will be more than just buttons.
I would probably build a usercontrol which encapsulates this behaviour for a label and control. The usercontrol uses a static to decide where the textblocks are positioned but would look something like the row edit control in this:
https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/WPF-Entity-Framework-MVVM-78cdc204
Which is a usercontrol has a contentpresenter in it so you can put any control you like ( such as a button ) "in" it and set a dependency property for the label.
2)
Define 2 contentcontrol templates similar to the one used in this:
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/28597.aspx
Put them in separate resource dictionaries and give them the same key.
Merge into application.current.resources the appropriate resource dictionary and hence style.
Seeing as this is an app setting, this is presumably a start up thing. People don't just change their "handedness" dynamically. So you could probably use these as staticresource. If they're realistically going to change at run time then I think this would be a bit more involved because you'd need to force re render of a view.
2 Templates are probably the right and stylish solution here as #RajN said.
Also you can define a grid with 2 columns and switch the property 'Grid.Column' of each controls accordingly
Maybe not the best way, but I managed to achieve this using a grid as per your suggestions. Thank you all for your valuable feedback.
I switched the columns and changed the widths accordingly.
if (AppSettings.IsLeft)
{
parentGrid.ColumnDefinitions[0].Width = new GridLength(400, GridUnitType.Pixel);
parentGrid.ColumnDefinitions[1].Width = new GridLength(1, GridUnitType.Star);
Grid.SetColumn(buttonGrid,0);
Grid.SetRow(buttonGrid,0);
Grid.SetColumn(contentGrid,1);
Grid.SetRow(contentGrid,0);
}

best way to implementation this UI?

one button with wrapped list view
my searched result are:
1.worst approach: put add button on the wrapped list view.
2.bad approach: set two data template for list view.
3.?
thanks
I've had something similar a while back. In the end I decided to add a fake data item where I needed the button.
Say I had a list of MyDataItem, I created a derived class MyFakeDataItem and added that at the end of the list, after I finished populating it. In the WPF I created two data templates, one for each class, and a selected to decide.
I think it turned out quite elegant, since it allowed me to easily override any real functionality I had on MyDataItem, and add a command on the fake one to suit my needs.
Hope that helps.

Protecting custom inline elements in WPF RichTextBox

I'm currently spiking with the WPF RichTextBox before I decide whether or not it can be used in a project of mine.
What I need is to have elements of text representing various objects (other texts or objects), a bit like a WIKI but not quite. Clicking on such a text will make stuff happen, like navigating to other texts or providing additional options.
Anyway, as these little text bits represent other objects I would like to protect them but I have succeeded with this only in part: The user cannot position a caret inside such a text element and edit/delete it but it is still possible to make a selection and delete/replace it, including my custom elements.
Have anyone travelled down this road with the RichTextBox? My latest experiment was to simply record all custom text elements when being part of a selection and then restoring them after the (destructive) edit. That fell apart because I can't find a way to re-insert my custom inline elements (derived from the Run class). The only way I've found to programmatically insert a Run (based) element at a specified position (TextPosition) is via its constructor.
Well, any hints would be greatly appreciated.
You are really looking for a FlowDocument, not a RichTextBox.

Silverlight WPF Generic Data Item

Basically I use lists to display information, these lists contain custom data items I have created, they all look similar and have some of the same controls in them, essentially they need to look the same colour, font etc. At the moment, I just seem to be repeating code over and over each time a change is needed i.e. colour.
I have been wondering if it would be a good idea to create a generic data item which all the lists use and then just collapse controls which aren't needed.
So I was going to create a user control called something like "GenericDataItem". This data item will contain all the controls that each data item would need, then use dependency properties to collapse controls not required.
My question is would this be the right way to go about this, or is there a better way?
Thanks.
Not sure I got the point, but using DataTemplateSelector could help you.

Style a button to match the current theme for the expand/collapse button on a TreeView

As you know, the built-in themes all define styles for the standard controls such as the TreeView control. We're trying to create something that looks an awful lot like a TreeView but isn't actually one, nor is it a subclass of one. It just has parts that we want to look like one for consistency.
For instance, our control too has a selected item whose background we'd love to match to the appearance of the background for the selected item in a TreeView (or more accurately the TreeViewItem) for the current theme. (You can't simply use highlight color as the themes have nice gradient brushes and borders, not just a solid brush.) Same with our expand/collapse togglebuttons. We want them to look just like the ones used in a TreeView for the current theme. (i.e. Sometimes a triangle, sometimes a box with a '+' in it, etc.)
Now while we can simply rip open Expression and copy the styles ourselves (or at least the parts that we need), we'd have to do that for each and every theme that MS provides. Plus, that wouldn't handle newer themes. And in a purest standpoint, that's duplicate styling information which just sits wrong with me.
Also, if someone styles the actual TreeView(Item), we want to pick it up as well. Since the parts that we want to style are required parts of a TreeView, we feel pretty confident that they're in there somewhere style-wise.
Not even sure what I want to do is possible but if anyone knows, they're most likely here on SO!
Yet another question close to a month old without even a comment. Very odd for the SO community to not chime in at least once! Guess it's not possible.
Well, what we ended up doing was using 'Show Me The Template' (Google it) to get the templates for the part (we don't have Expression), then manually managing them ourselves instead of using the built-in styles. NOT at all what we wanted to do since we don't know of a way to get the nice gradients that are defined in the system already without duplicating them, but the end result does match perfectly so there's that. As such, this too is getting marked as the answer. I'll gladly change it if someone else actually gives me one that works (or is close enough! Just need something people! Feel like I'm posting in a vacuum here!

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