I have a WPF application which runs fine on Windows 7 OS. But the same app crashes on a particular few Windows XP machines.
It runs fine on few windows XP machine. but on a few XP machine it fails to start.
ERROR - Image format is unrecognized.
I know this question has been asked few times. but my problem is i am still not able to figure out as to how to resolve this.
Should I change the .ico used for the application ..
Unfortunately, simply removing the 256x256 application isn't the greatest solution when you want to support the large icon size for Windows Vista, 7, 8 and forward.
Another way to solve this problem ... is to not compress the 256x256 image in the icon. See this forum thread for more info.
How does one do that? Well, most icon utilities will have an option for this (as this is a common problem). I use IcoFX and below you can see the option (highlighted in red) I needed to clear.
I've had a bit of fun with this problem this morning. It turned out that the error was occurring only on XP machines where the colour settings were set to 16 bit, and when I changed it to 32-bit the problem magically disappeared.
This goes for XP (including Embedded) SP3.
In your WPF application you will have at least two places to set icons:
The application icon. This is used for displaying the application in Explorer, desktop, etc. You set this in the project properties.
The window icon. This is used as icon in the upper-left corner of the window, and perhaps for alt-tabbing and on the taskbar. You set this as the Icon property on the window.
Often, you may use the same icon file in both cases. However, if you have a compressed 256x256 icon as window icon, then this can crash in Windows XP. This is what you are experiencing. On the other hand, this not the case when the application icon has a compressed 256x256 icon.
So another solution (which I implemented in all my projects) is to have two icons: The application icon (which contains all sizes) and a special "window icon" version, which only contains the sizes 16x16 and 32x32 (since those are the only sizes which are used).
If I remember correctly Windows XP does not support icons larger than 48x48 pixels and this could be the reason for the crash. .ico files should definitely run on both systems.
You can create an icon that support multiple sizes, so if you add 48x48 and for example 256x256 in the same file you should be good. Also be sure to use select a good software to produce the icon when making icons that support multiple sized. I've used Greenfish Icon Editor which I think works fine. But there are multitudes of other products for this.
Be sure to read The ICON handbook, section Windows, it contains good info about what icon sizes and bit depths to use.
Other threads on SO supports my belief:
problems with icon image
Which icon sizes should my Windows application's icon include?
Another workaround to (16/32bit resolution problem) is not to define icon in XAML, but load it in code:
this.Icon = new BitmapImage(new Uri("pack://application:,,,/UserInterface;component/Resources/Icons/ReportViewer.ico"));
Related
OK, so I have built a Windows Form application. I now want an icon for it. So I use the Icon Editor built into Visual Studio 2012. Draw it all out to look nice and purdy. Once I am done, I have a .ico file and I make it the default icon for the project, and also the icon for the one WinForm in the application.
Unfortunately, it does not show up as I have created it! It is displayed as the default icon file as it existed before I modified it in the icon editor. It's a 32x32 4 bit icon. If I change the extension to .bmp it shows up as the default.
It looks like the VS icon editor is editing something else, not the appearance of the icon. Can someone tell me what I am doing wrong?
I used to have a progam called IconArt that would create icons that looked like icons when I used them in VS. IconArt is now abandonware and won't run on my 64bit Windows workstation.
Since I didn't get any answers within the time I was hoping, I posted this question also in the MSDN Visual Studio forum, and got a good answer that I thought I should post here. Credit to Reed Copsey, Jr, for the answer!
This is it:
You'll need to put your design in all of the different versions. ICO
files contain multiple versions of the same image, for different
screen resolutions.
My personal preference is to not use VS - there's an ICO plugin for
Paint.Net (all free) which allows you to make a single image
(typically 256x256), and save multiple versions within an ICO file in
one shot. It's very useful for building icons.
See
http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/topic/927-icon-cursor-and-animated-cursor-format-v37-may-2010/
for the plugin.
Since I am a Paint.Net user, the plugin sounded like a great idea, and I tried it. Bingo! This works very nicely.
I'm having a peculiar problem in a WPF-app I've written. It has a single window that loads a single user control after some user input which works perfectly fine for almost all users. Two users reported that the app crashed on launch which sent me investigating.
The culprit I found was that they had set the overall font size in Windows to "Extra large" under Display Properties. When I switched it back to "Normal" they could load the app just fine.
Since I can't post images here is a link to the image that shows where to set the font size if anyone wonders: http://content.screencast.com/users/CarloToribio/folders/Jing/media/f6791854-d6ad-4aae-a3f8-42e4140ad1aa/2010-07-26_1235.png
These users are old and have bad sight so they really need the "Extra large" font size to work with Windows so I need to solve this somehow. The icon that is being loaded is a .ico with several sizes from 16x16 up to 256x256.
Does anyone know what could affect this?
The problem seems to be related to the largest size of the icon (256x256) on Windows XP. I simply resaved my icon without the 256x256 image and the problem disappeared.
I was wondering: are you satisfied with the text-rendering in the Visual Studio 2010 editor (Beta 2)? On my primary monitor it looks very blurred, even when using font size 12!
When using font size 10 or 11 it's horrible. Can the WPF text rendering mode be set explicitly for VS code window?
EDIT: I am using Windows 7 x64 and my primary monitor is a Benq G2412HD. What's kind of strange is that the font seems to be nicer on the secondary monitor, which is a 4 year old 19' TFT.
EDIT: I tried several Cleartype settings but none really looks as nice as when using Visual Studio 2008.
The first image is from the primary monitor, the second from the secondary. Both are using Consolas 10pt (my preferred font).
Primary screen http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/6789/vs2010.png
Secondary screen http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/7986/vs20102.png
I use Consolas size 10 and I have no issues.
Try following the instructions on Microsoft's website for tuning clear type. You can find it here.
If you use IE when accessing that website, you can make changes to clear type settings right from the browser.
TextSharp is the answer right now. I really hope they continue to fix this issue because I've had terrible results on my primary and secondary monitors with the standard rendering. Using beta 2.
With 8 or 9pt Lucida Console the text is fine with text mode set to 'Aliased'.
Here is how VS2008 and VS2010 beta2 editor text rendering looks for me, side by side. The font is Consolas 13pt.
VS2008:
http://int19h.org/so/cleartype_vs9.png
VS2010:
http://int19h.org/so/cleartype_vs10.png
I don't see any observable differences.
[EDIT] Okay, I've reproduced it with the color scheme posted. It seems that the key part here is to use bright text on dark background. With dark-on-bright, the output seems to be the same.
Here's some guesswork. Apparently, Direct2D (which WPF uses for antialiased text output) always "gives precedence" to foreground (i.e. text) color over background color when doing subpixel antialiasing. On the other hand, traditional GDI ClearType seems to always give precedence to dark colors over bright ones. Thus, with bright letters and dark backgrounds, ClearType text becomes thinner, but Direct2D text remains of the same size, pixel-wise. Furthermore, as bright pixels are more intensive, the same amount of them "stands out" more with same foreground/background contrast, so bright-on-dark D2D text looks noticeably "bolder".
Well I experience the same oddity (not only in VS2010, but in all WPF applications). Sadly there seems no way of setting a "backwards style" text rendering in WPF in general.
I just found this addon "Text Sharp" for VS2010 on the VS gallery which lets you select different font aliasing options for the VS2010 text editor, but at least for me, this didn't help with the issue.
Here is the link, if you might want to try it: Text Sharp VS2010 extension
Please have a look at the screenshots in the following update (to come in final release of VS2010), and see if the improvements solve your issues with VS font rendering:
http://blogs.msdn.com/text/archive/2010/03/05/additional-wpf-text-clarity-improvements.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/visualstudio/archive/2010/03/11/wpf-text-clarity-improvements.aspx
Have you ensured that ClearType is enabled on your OS? I've seen similar issues with 2010 when ClearType was disabled on my machine. Re-enabling ClearType made the Text snappy looking again.
For some reason the ClearType setting on my OS kept getting undone when I TS'd around a bit. I had to reset it a couple of times but it seems to have calmed down recently (I believe I was using a Pre-RTM build of Win7 at the time).
Try using Courier New font.
Tools -> Options -> Environment -> Fonts and Colors
ollifant I agree with you, they are different.
Others may not see any differences from screen shots, but on the actual machine I can see differences. Loading the same project with the same settings side by side looks different. I think it is the difference in how WPF renders fonts or something.
The VS 2010 pane looks shifted slightly left, like kerning in the font is off by a little or something. Again - same font in both VS 2008 and 2010.
I have tried now on Windows 7 and Windows Vista. Maybe older XP machines render differently, can't say (and no I won't load XP to find out).
I have noticed a rendering problem with Visual Studio 2010b2 as well.
I've tried adjusting the clear type settings to no avail.
I use consolas 9 pt on win7x64 with a average 19 inch TFT.
This is what it looks like on my system.
A side by side screen shot
OK here's what you do. Finally figured it out!
You need to reset cleartype to the default values. Don't try to tune it based on what you think looks good - because what you think looks good won't in VS2010.
I noticed on a brand new install of Windows 7 my VS2010 text suddenly became a lot nicer. After running cleartype to try to get nice text on a wall mounted Sony TV I found it had totally screwed up text for my normal external monitor.
I haven't yet found a way to reset cleartype explicitly, but apparently the below explains what the defaults are :
When you open ClearType Text Tuner,
select "Turn on ClearType" check box
and click on Next. Then, again click
on the Next after setting Native
Resolution. Then, select the options
as given below:
1st Screen – 1st Option out of 2
2nd Screen – 2nd Option out of 6
3rd Screen – 1st Option out of 3
4th Screen – 2nd Option out of 6
Finally, click on Finish.
This is for VS2010 RC.
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.
When an application icon is displayed, is it Windows who decides which version (bit depth) to use or is it somehow set in the ICO file?
If I create an ICO file only with 32bit colors (24bit + 8bit transparency), the icon displays fine on Win XP. If I add for example 4bit version, Windows use always this 4bit version, even if there are 32bit images as well. My monitor is set to 32bit colors. I am using Greenfish Icon Editor if this is any important.
Is there any way how to push Windows to use the 32bit icons instead of the 4bit ones?
EDIT: I used IcoFX to just open the original ICO file and re-save it and now Windows always chooses the right bit depth. Interesting...
It's chosen by Windows based on the bit-depth of the surface it's drawn onto. It also depends on the actual order of the icons inside the .ICO file (or resource), that's why you get different result with IcoFX.
Windows will use the icon with whatever bit depth it can display, so your understanding of how things should work is correct.
I've not used Greenfish, so don't know if it is creating the icon file correctly. If you're using VS2008 you could try the (free) Axialis IconWorkshop to double-check the icon file (they have a non-free standalone version also).