For WPF Prism + MEF, most samples use usercontrol, is there any issue NOT to use page instead?
Well Pages are intended for XAML Browser Applications and should be contained inside Frame or a NavigationWindow. On the other hand UserControl can be contained inside a Window or another control.
XBAP run from Internet Explorer. Most samples apparently are not XBAP so that's why they don't use Page control. If it's what you want there is no problem using Page for Prism application. And MEF has nothing to do with this question.
Related
Do you know what is the difference between: User Control, Pages and Windows on WPF Browser Applications. I've found information related with this, but all the time are about WPF Desktop application.
Is it different for WPF Browser application?
I'm deploying an application but I don't know what is the best option for the Login section, the main section, the about section, etc.
Could someone explain me how can I use this tools in WPF Browser application?
Thanks in advance!
I use Pages in XBAPs the exact same way I would use a Window object in WPF. That is to say, rarely.
I usually have one Page/Window for my application and that is it. Switching the current view is usually done by switching a CurrentView property in my ApplicationViewModel, which changes what View is displayed in the main page.
I use UserControls when I want to create some kind of generic control, or for my Views. My Views can also be DataTemplates, and it is not uncommon for me to have a UserControl View that also has other Views in the UserControl.Resources (providing that all Views are related)
For example, I might have a UserControl called ProductsView which is the View that displays a list of Product objects, and the UserControl.Resources will contain a DataTemplate called ProductView which defines how WPF should display the ProductModel.
Can somebody help me understand what the real difference is and why the MVVM Light toolkit users UserControl's for Views instead of Pages? I know there are some inherient differences between UserControl's and pages like access to the "NavigationService" on a page.
And some of the examples from John Papa's implementation of the MVVM Light use Page instead UserControl, but if you use the MVVM Light "View" Template it uses a UserControl.
thanks
dbl
A Page within a Silverlight application is designed to be hosted within a Frame - and is part of the navigation framework (see the MSDN Navigation Overview documentation). Applications of this style navigate from page to page, with the URL updating to reflect the current location, in much the same way as HTML-based websites.
A UserControl, is a re-useable unit of your user-interface. It is typically composed of a number of controls, UI elements - and may have some code-behind to perform logic.
If MVVM Light used Pages instead of UserControls, the framework would only be useful for navigation-based Silverlight applications, which are not terribly popular. However, UserControls can be hosted inside any other Panel or Page, therefore this approach is more flexible. A UserControl can be used as the content of a Page, but can also be used in many other contexts.
I am trying to load a swf file as background for my WPF window. For this I have used a WinformHost and I load the swf movie in the Winform host using the plugin AxShockwaveFlashObjects.
<Grid>
<WindowsFormsHost Name="wfh">
<ax:AxShockwaveFlash x:Name="axFlash"/>
</WindowsFormsHost>
</Grid>
Till here the application works fine. However when I add my other controls(buttons,textblocks etc) to the Grid, they dont show. All I see is just the movie. Any pointers please.
This is actually expected since the WPF elements are all rendered within a single HWND (that of the WPF Window in this case) and therefore are below the WindowsFormsHost (or any other HwndHost). This is discussed here in MS' documentation and also here.
In theory this will be supported by some new functionality being added to .NET 4.5 - via the IsRedirected property of the HwndHost. This is discussed in some of the preview documentation for 4.5 here.
Is it possible to have a project containing both Winforms and WPF?
Say a WinForm project that is transformed step by step(form by form) in a WPF one, will be possible to have a Winform opening on a button, and a WPF one opening on a other button?
Yes. You have to pick one technology to display each physical window and control in your app, but there's no reason why you can't mix and match.
For example:
A WinForms window can show a WPF window.
A WPF window can show a WinForms window.
A WinForms window can contain WPF content (see the ElementHost control).
A WPF window can contain WinForms controls (see the WindowsFormsHost control).
This works great.
One can have WPF windows in Windows Forms and Windows Forms windows in WPF
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms745781.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.integration.windowsformshost.aspx
Adding Winforms to WPF projects can be done smoothly (directly from the "Add new item" menu), but there is not straight option to add a WPF window to a Winforms project. Still, I handled to do it following these steps:
Add a WPF User Control (this option is available on the "Add new
item" menu) and then convert it into a WPF Window. Modify the XAML
changing the UserControl parent tag to Window, and remove the
inheritance from UserControl (all of this is explained in this link).
Add a reference to System.Xaml.dll. See this link.
Add a reference to System.Windows.dll (I found it on my computer on this path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework.NETFramework\v4.5. Be aware it might be different in yours). See this link.
What you might be looking for is the ElementHost control. What it lets you do is take WPF content and host it in a Windows Forms window. More details are here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms745781.aspx
There is also a control that lets you do the reverse: host Windows Forms content from within WPF:
http://nayyeri.net/host-windows-forms-controls-in-wpf
Between the two, you can move the 'dividing line' between WPF and Windows Forms with some degree of flexibility.
There is at one caveat you'll need to keep in mind. Windows Forms works internally in terms of HWND's... a window managed by the legacy Windows window manager (which handles the z-order). WPF doesn't do this... A WPF tree is typically rendered into a single HWND', and it's WPF that manages things like z-order. What this means to you is that z-order doesn't always work the way you expect it to, and there are things you can't do with hosted Windows Forms controls that you can do with traditional WPF elements. (There is actually a way to solve this, but it involves periodically rendering the HWND into a memory bitmap, rendering that bitmap into a WPF surface, and then redirecting events directed to the WPF surface to the underlying HWND. This is powerful, but tricky and difficult to get right.)
I see no objection to do that.(I have in WinForms Application WPF windows)
Many of the examples used MessageBox.Show which is part of the Windows.Forms.
Of course you must rewrite all windows, not only controls.
I'm writing a prism application, I've just created my 1st module, fired it all up and amazingly - it works.
The application is going to grow soon(TM), and I'll be facing the need to host those modules in separate GUI elements.
What type of GUI elements would you recommend to host the modules?
Is it possible to data-bind a module to some control like a tab-control? How is it done?
Is there some kind of a dock manager (similiar to AvalonDock) for Silverlight?
Have you looked at StockTrader sample project provided with PRISM? It has in Shell.xaml AnimatedTabControl (inherited from TabControl) to which are bound modules: WatchModule (look at WatchListController.cs file) and PositionModule (look at PositionModule.cs file).
[Edit]
Take a look also at Prism Explorer sample project, which is using TabControl in Shell.
There IS dock manager, check silverlight toolkit ( it is installed with sl4 or you can take it here )
Also there is an example of binding controls to tab control tabs with MEF on channel 9