I want to create a borderless Window via Windowstyle=None, but still want the default OS DropShadow effect.
I do NOT want to draw the border myself because i do NOT want to set AllowTransparency=True (the application runs on low end systems where this causes very bad performance of the application).
I do also NOT want to use third party Dlls that generate a "Shell" for me.
So what is want is to call the OS native API to draw its default border for me. I tried out this answer here DropShadow for WPF Borderless Window but this didnt work for window 8.
Any suggestions would be helpful.
Thanks
Edit: Using .NET 4.0 and the solution should support Windows 7 and Windows 8
There is no native drop shadow in Windows 8. You can call the API but it won't do anything.
Metro flat design doesn't have drop shadow, unlike the glossy Vista and W7.
AFAIK without AllowsTransparency="True" you won't have that effect.
Related
I have only found solutions to this question that work with images, but I want to be able to overlook a stack panel with this "effect", for example. I actually want it to look something like the one in Windows, for example, like here:
so that you can see a slight transparency in the background.
This kind of translucent texture is called Acrylic and is a Fluent Design System component on Windows 10.
If you want to bring this kind of brush to your app, I would recommend you to look into using the WinUI library. This is the modern and native user experience (UX) framework for Windows desktop applications going forward.
WinUI 2.x controls be used WPF applications using XAML Islands.
WinUI 3 is the next version of WinUI that includes a full native UI platform that can be used on top of the latest version of .NET and be seen as a replacement for WPF and WinForms GUIs.
There is no native support for Acrylic in WPF.
I was successfully able to register a DWM thumbnail and display it in my window (what I mean is the Vista/Win7 feature which allows you to live stream other top-level windows inside yours). Is there any way to rotate the thumbnail in my window? I Use WPF 3.5 SP1.
Try RotateTransform
So it seems it is currently not possible:
It has basically the same restrictions as hosting Windows Forms: no visual brush, airspace issues, only uniform scale transforms will work correctlly.
Let's just hope Microsoft will add support for more transforms in Windows 8.
I have developed a GUI for a random application using WPF. I have a bunch of out of box WPF controls laid on the application window. I haven't customized anything, didn't use bitmaps, etc.
When running my application and zooming using Magnifier application in Windows 7 (Win key + Plus key, the magnified GUI is showing pixels.I am probably wrong, because I can't explain it otherwise, but isn't WPF supposed to provide vector like control rendering?
Thanks for participating in the discussion.
Bonus Reading
Tim Sneath: Magnifier: An Interesting Discovery (archive)
WPF Vector based interface *(screenshot of WPF being vector scaled by Magnifier)
MSDN Blogs: Greg Schechter explains why it longer happens (archive)
Back when Vista first shipped, and when WPF was on version 3.0, zooming with the built-in magnifier would actually do vector-based scaling.
This stopped working when WPF 3.5 service pack 1 shipped. (It worked in 3.5 before sp1.) The reason it worked before then is that the DWM (Desktop Window Manager) - the part of Windows responsible for presenting everything you see on screen - uses MILCORE.DLL to do its rendering. Version 3.0 and 3.5 of WPF also used this same component to render - this meant that all WPF content was native content, so to speak. (In fact, on Windows XP, which doesn't have the DWM, MILCORE.DLL is something that WPF puts on your system for its own benefit. But it's built into Vista and Windows 7.) When WPF was using MILCORE.DLL to render on Vista, any effects applied by the DWM such as scaling would also apply in the way you want to WPF - it really did scale without pixelating.
Unfortunately, this is no longer the case. And the reason is that WPF started adding new rendering features. In 3.5 sp1, the new feature in question was support for custom pixel shaders. To enable that, Microsoft had to release an update to the MIL. (The Media Integration Layer - the bit that does the actual rendering.) However, they weren't really in a position to update MILCORE.DLL, because that's part of Windows - it's how everything you see on screen gets to be on screen. Releasing a new version of MILCORE.DLL effectively means pushing out an update to Windows. The release schedule for Windows is independent of that for .NET, and so the only way the WPF team could reasonably add new features was to ship a new MIL. (In theory they could have done it via Windows Update, but since WPF is now owned by a different division of Microsoft than Windows, that sort of thing doesn't seem to happen in practice.)
As of .NET 3.5 sp1, the MIL is in a different DLL called wpf_gfx_vXXXX.dll where vXXXX is the version number. In .NET 4.0, it's wpf_gfx_v0400.dll.
The upside is that WPF gets to add new rendering features with each new version, without needing Windows itself to be updated. The downside is that WPF's rendering is no longer as tightly integrated with Windows as it was briefly back when Vista shipped. And the upshot is, as you've seen, that magnifying is not as much fun as it used to be.
The magnifier application implements its own zoomed image rendering, so that's why you are seeing pixels. WPF does use vector graphics, but in this situation it's not the WPF application itself that is rendering the zoomed image.
If you use something like Snoop you can see zoomed and scaled WPF vector graphics rendering in action.
I suppose, Windows 7 magnifier takes a snapshot of actual application on-screen UI, and then magnifies it itself (not making a special case for WPF applications). Of course what it can access is just the pixels, not the vector graphics which works behind the scene.
The Windows-7-Magnifier is pixel based, but there is a difference in magnifier mode depending on wether an Aero-theme is active or not.
with Areo theme the zoom is pixelated.
without Areo theme the zoom is smoothed (blurry).
Only with Areo theme other Views (except "Docked") are selectable.
I'm looking to put an application window behind all other windows.
I was thinking of using .NET 4 and WPF or Silverlight.
I don't have any specific drawing code, I just want my application window as my desktop wallpaper while retaining the interactivity (no mucking around with screenshots etc).
Is this even possible and if so, how?
Edit: I'm using Windows 7 x64.
Edit 2: I know the desktop is drawn to a window with id 0 (or something like that). Can't I use interop calls to put my window as a child of window 0?
For Windows XP and previous versions, use Active Desktop ad set a web page that runs a Silverlight application.
I'm having problems with the rendering of a WPF app over a remote desktop connection.
The applications chrome is rendering, but none of the content is coming through, as if the window is not drawing. Instead the previous content of the screen is showing in it's place.
This has been a problem with the application running on both Vista & Win 7, with remote control being taken from XP and Win7.
The problem is not application specific, if I create a new WPF app, with just a textblock on the window, it will also not run. (Neather will the windows preview in VS2008 display.)
Is there some trick to getting WPF running under RDP?
I read on Kevin Dente's blog (from a twitter post) that he was having trouble with WPF apps in virtual machines. While not the same as Remote Desktop, it's possible the problem could be the same. Kevin was able to fix his problem by disabling hardware accelleration by creating a DWORD registry value at
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Avalon.Graphics\DisableHWAcceleration
and then setting it to 1.
His original blog post is here: http://weblogs.asp.net/kdente/archive/2009/10/19/visual-studio-2010-beta-2-editor-performance-fix-running-on-a-virtual-machine.aspx
That may not be your exact solution, but maybe it points you in the right direction.
WPF should render over RDP; it's smart enough to know when it can render in hardware, and when it can't it reverts to its own GDI+ based software rendering. I would make sure you're running .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 on the remote machine, since there were changes to remoting that might pose issues. (See link below.)
I've been developing a WPF app for the past 6 months and it works just fine over RDP. (From Vista and Win7 to XP, Vista and Server 2003.) One important caveat, however, is that it renders using the Classic theme. So if you're using controls that don't have a classic theme, they won't render. If you're just dropping a TextBox on a Window, then obviously that's not your problem.
Check out this question for some links that may be helpful: Are there problems with rendering WPF over Remote Desktop under Windows XP?
I just had this problem with the ribbonwindow not displaying correctly when testing for the first time via RDP - the transparent background was white, the close minimize/maximize buttons were missing, the rounded corners on the bottom of the window were square, and the top row of ribbon buttons were almost impossible to select.
Turns out there was a simple fix for me. Right-click the RDP connection icon (I have it saved on my desktop), select "Edit", then the "experience" tab, and change "detect connection quality automatically" to "LAN (10 Mbps or higher)".
This fixed it for me.
Ade
Did you also try Win7 latest RDP - Win7 connection? The thing is WPF doesn't use GDI to draw elements.
VNC clients (like UltraVNC) probably will do the trick for you as they using much simplier algorithms more like of sending bitmaps.
I have the same problem than the asker. The standard, out-of-the-box Checkbox is not rendering correctly. I can only see if it is checked when hoovering the checkbox. Otherwhise, no difference between checked and unchecked. Important note : It occurs when setting the foreground to white (see here : https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/1c03db49-7e53-4cbb-9dd1-b328017c4453/wpf-checkbox-and-radiobutton-check-mark-not-showing-under-xp-windows-classic-theme-and-remote?forum=wpf)
Our application used to have this problem with a custom progress bar.
We fixed this by setting the background color of the Border control to White. This leads me to think there is an issue with transparent backgrounds
There is no special trick needed to get WPF content to show across remote desktop. Our WPF-based app renders just fine over RDP (tried from numerous machines) with no problems. We're even using animations, gradients, WriteableBitmap, etc. w/ no problems.