Dropdown menu overlaps other controls - wpf

In my WPF application I would like to get a dropdown menu under some other elements in the window. When menu is expanded it overlaps other controls. But I need these controls remain over the menu anytime.
I tried to play with ZIndex, but without any success.
Is it possible somehow to show dropdown menu under other controls?
Thanks for help!

You cannot achieve this with a drop-down menu, because by definition it is displayed on a separate window above the current window.
So if you want some control to appear under other controls, you have to use just normal controls like Grid, make them invisible at the beginning, and show as soon as you need the "dropdown" to appear (and of course hide afterwards).

Related

Implementation of menu buttons in WPF/MVVM/Prism

I have a Region in the top left of the WPF application which I want to be my global button bar where the user chooses which screen they want to view, and the appropriate content will then be displayed in the main region. THere will also be a sub navigation region in the top right with sub-menu options within that screen, eg if the user clicked "Maintenance" from the main menu, the sub menu would show options for New, Update, Delete, Edit etc.
What I want to have is a way to create a custom menu bar by simply specifying a list of Text button names, and ICommand/Parameter pairs for the action to invoke on button click. The natural way to do this would be have a MenuButtonViewModel class with dependency properties Title, Command and CommandParameter. One more would also be needed, IsSelected, so there is some visual way for the user to see which screen you are currently on, so it needs to behave like a toggle button, but where only one button in the group can be selected at a time. I can then have a UserControl where the content of the bar binds to an ObservableCollection and uses data templates to render the button bar.
I have tried a few ways of doing this so far but cannot figure out a way that gives me the visual behaviour I want. These are my requirements
1) Button to change background to a different Brush OnMouseOver
2) When button is selected, a different Brush is displayed as the background until a new button in the group is selected, like a togglebutton IsSelected behaviour
3) Only one button in the group can be selected at a time
The ways I have tried to do this so far are
1) Extending RadioButton with my own class, adding dependency properties for command and commandparameter. Setting all controls to have the same group Id. Data template to override display of radio button to make it look like a visual button with triggers for mouseover and isselected.
This works fine, except for one thing. Once you select a radio button in a group, there is no way to deselect all options in the radio button group. So if you navigate to "maintenance" and then click the sub menu for "Countries" for example, then you are displayed the country maintenance screen. If you then go to a different area of the app and select "Deal Entry" from the main menu, you are taken to the deal entry screen. If you then click "Maintenance", it displays the generic "maintenance" content and brings back the sub menu control for maintenance, where "Country" is selected in the radio button group, but this is undesirable. When you navigate back to Maintenance, it should deselect all sub menu options, display the generic maintenance landing page content and let you select a sub menu option before displaying that screens content. The first time you load Maintenance, nothing is selected, but once you have chosen an option, then there is no way to have nothing selected again when you reload the maintenance screen.
2) I then tried extending a ListBox, styling it with a horizontal stackpanel for the content, each listboxitem is a menubuttonViewModel. This allows me to only select a single option at a time and to clear the selection when you navigate away from the page. It also lets me change the background when you mouse over each listboxitem.
The bit I can't get working with the listbox is to have the background different on the IsSelected trigger. There seems to be some trigger on the default ListBoxItem template that overrides anything you specify in CSS so no matter what trigger I put on the listboxitem or menubuttonviewmodel style, the background simply does not change. I think I need to redefine the data and content template for listboxitem, but only have it apply for this listbox, so it can't be a global template change to all listboxitems - as I want to be able to use listboxes elsewhere in the app without inheriting this behaviour.
Can anyone give their thoughts on these two approaches and how to perhaps solve the issues I'm having to make one of them work in the way I want, particularly if you can advise how I can override the content/data template for the listboxitems in my style so they do not use the default triggers, and I can get the IsSelected trigger working for me?
If I understood correctly, you would want to clear the selection on the RadioButtons from the Sub-Menu each time you navigate back from another Main Menu option.
In order to solve this, you could have every Radio Button "unchecked" by manually setting the RadioButton´s IsChecked property value to false. A possible solution could be the following:
If you want to clear any checked option from the Sub-Menu everytime you navigate to a different section of the Main Menu, you could first notify to the Sub-Menu´s ViewModel by publishing an event using the EventAggregator after selecting and clicking a different MainMenu button, from the SelectionChangedEventHandler method of the Main Menu´s ViewModel.
Therefore, the Sub-Menu EventHandler of the published event would update each RadioButton´s IsChecked property value to false, which it could be accomplished by using a "Two-Way" Binding between each IsChecked property defined on the View, and each boolean "RadioButton1IsChecked" property implemented on the ViewModel.
I hope this helped you.

Grids - Action Column to behave like a Flyout Menu

I'm using ExtJS for my project and can see that there is a way to embed "actioncolumns" inside of Grid columns. However, my "action" isn't just a single click, it actually needs to show a flyout menu (similar to the Menu control). Is there a direct way to do this in Ext? Or do I have to implement all this functionality myself?
There is no direct way. You need to create a menu and show it manually in the event handler for action button. You can also show menu as a context menu for the grid (right click).

Google like SearchBox in Silverlight

I've created a Google like SearchBox control in Silverlight. That means, as I type in the box, a DropDownListBox appears just below the SearchBox, showing all the items that match with the text I've typed in searchbox so far (i.e AutoComplete feature), exactly like this:
Now, I want to add a functionality to it : I want to make the DropDownListBox to disappear, as soon as user clicks outside it, or anywhere on the screen. I cannot handle MouseLeftButtonDown (or any such event) in other controls, to accomplish this, because users can click anywhere, including non-silverlight region. Can anybody suggest me what should I do to achieve this?
So my question basically is:
How to know if user has just clicked and the click event occurred outside a particular control?
Please note that AutoCompleteBox doesn't serve my purpose. So I cannot use it.
I have a feeling that working with LostFocus event can solve your problem.
I guess this question is a bit old, but i just stumble upon trying to do the same and finding a solution. This is what i did
Created a Border with All Margins -500, this will cover the full screen essentially.
On Click Behaviour of this Border, the dropdown section of SearchBox
is collapsed.
Adjust z-Index of Border just below the SearchBox and DropDown
section, so clicking on SearchBox or DropDown wouldn't close it.
Set Border Visibility Collapsed, and make it visible when DropDown is Visible.
I hope it helps someone who is looking for the similar problem.

silverlight combobox - highlight a few items in the popup list

I'm wondering if I can make fake sections in the popup menu:
The rule would be, if the 5th character of the displayed item is different from the 5th char of the previous item in the menu, it has to be highlighted
What do you think?
Thanks!
To achieve this would be a hack.
Normally the items that appear in the popup part of a combo box will be an instantiated data template, and each gets its own data item and has no clue or knowledge of the other items in the list, so you couldn't use a converter or anything else to achieve this behavior.
What you could do though is inject (attach) your own control into the popup part of the combo box, and take over the rendering of the data items. How you do this will depend upon which combo box you are using (i.e. MS or some other vendor's) and would be a whole new question.
Would that be easier if I were to create my own combobox as follow:
a TextBox associated with a Button that when pushed would popup a datagrid in which I could implement this conditional formatting?

insert radiobox in menu in forms

How can I insert radiobutton in Menu as Menu item. I use WinForms and there I see only few option to insert other controls, but no radio :/
Also it's impossible to drag it from Controls and drop in menu in Design View :/
That's probably because an actual "radio button" control as a menu item would be weird, when you can already show a menu item as "checked" using the "radio button style". See the MenuItem.RadioCheck property.
If you really do want to do this, create an owner drawn menu. This is pretty straightforward. Here's a tutorial:
http://www.csharphelp.com/2006/08/ownerdraw-menu-items-in-c/
As for drawing the radiobuttons, use the static functions of the ControlPaint class.

Resources