I am creating a set of controls that I wish to use in both a Silverlight and Windows Phone deployment. The core controls are contained within a WP7 class library, which can be used by both deployments. I then have platform specific controls contained in further WP7 and Silverlight libraries.
For the shared controls, I need to define a different default style for each platform. From what I've been reading the generic.xaml needs to be in the same assembly as the controls it's styling.
How would I approach this to be able to define a resource for a control in my WP7 assembly, and another resource for the same control in my Silverlight assembly while the control itself is in another shared assembly?
Adding the generic.xaml from my assembly into the App.Resources works fine. Works in the App.xaml and by programatically adding the merged resource dictionary.
Related
I am working in WPF and WinForms for both Windows XP and Windows 7/10 users (.NET 4.0 due to XP).
Some WPF Windows are used as dialogs for older WinForms applications without a WPF Application class/App.xaml file.
This in itself isn't a problem but I find I'm having to declare styles in resource dictionaries in user controls/windows in the WinForms/WPF situations which isn't normally necessary in plain WPF applications due to App.xaml.
My question is whether WPF detects that the same resource is being loaded twice (in a pure WPF application e.g. UserControl and App.xaml) and copes with/manages this without interference from me or do I have to try to ensure I only declare resource dictionaries once?
Many thanks.
The answer is no.
If you load a resource dictionary as a resource for a usercontrol then each instance of the usercontrol means another instance of any resources it uses in memory.
If that is going to be a problem then you need to do something.
You might just be able to instantiate an application object and use that to stash your resources in. Application.Current.Resources is after all just referencing the current application. Depends on exactly how your app works.
If you try to load the same resource dictionary twice, the application will throw a runtime error.
But, if you are only defining the styles already present in the resource dictionary, in the user control also, i.e, basically two styles with the same name one in the resource dictionary and the other in the user control, then no error is thrown. The style in the user control will have a higher priority.
My understanding of the difference between a WPF theme and a WPF skin is the following:
A WPF skin is a set of resources loaded by an application.
A WPF theme is a set of resources handled by the OS.
To load a skin, I can just call Application.Current.Resources.MergedDictionaries.Add (mySkin);
However, I don't see any way to load a theme.
Is this documented or available?
Should I access the System.Windows.SystemResources internal class?
You can load them as a ResourceDictionary:
<Window
x:Class=”TestProject.Window1?
xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation”
xmlns:x=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml”>
<Window.Resources>
<ResourceDictionary
Source=”/presentationframework.aero;component/themes/aero.normalcolor.xaml” />
</Window.Resources>
</Window>
Note: You would need to have a reference to the PresentationFramework.Aero.dll.
There's quite a subtle difference between Skins and Themes, and the reason why you're having problems with what you're trying to do might stem from this:
In WPF, a theming and skinning takes
on slight variations to their
meanings. Theming refers to
controlling the look and consistency
of an application UI to match the
operating system. For example, a WPF
application can be themed for the
Windows Aero theme or the Windows
Classic Theme. Skinning refers to
changing the application's appearance.
In other words, applying or letting
the user pick a skin to change the
look and feel of the application.
Robby Ingrebertsen, while working on
the WPF team, simplifies it as
follows:
Around here, we generally say that "theming" refers to the system theme
and "skinning" refers to changes to a specific app. This has helped to
clarify our internal communication
From here
So essentially, if you want your app to look like one of the Windows themes,ie the current windows theme - you don't have to set any styles in your app and it'll chose a pre-defined XAML skin that resembles it automatically. But, if you want to style your application, you make a skin for the app as you're doing.
As far as loading the Windows themes, this answer might help
(Answering my own question)
The way to load a resource dictionary as a theme is to add it to the list of merged dictionaries of the generic.xaml resource dictionary.
WPF controls get their default styles, colors and brushes from a theme (Usually, in PresentationFramework.Aero.dll).
What piece of loads this assembly? And where are the resource dictionary stored?
I have my own WPF custom themes and load them in the Application.Current.Resources.MergedDictionary.
However, this does not work if the WPF themed control is hosted in Windows Forms since Application.Current is null.
Is there a way to do something similar to what WPF does? If so, what is it?
You cannot use the WPF themes in Winforms because they are two different technologies. There isn't a similar theme mechanism in Winforms natively. You can use third-party controls that support themes in Winforms. The most notable of these are the tools from Infragistics and Telerik.
Bottom line answer is no, there isn't.
Can you try just adding the theme to the control instead of the Application?
control.Resources.MergedDictionaries.Clear();
control.Resources.MergedDictionaries.Add(resourceDictionary);
(answering my own question)
The way to load a resource dictionary as a theme is to add it to the list of merged dictionaries of the generic.xaml resource dictionary.
There is no other way to load a resource dictionary as a theme.
This works fine when used from WinForms
I've just begun dabbling in putting together a set of controls as assemblies and I'm working on default styling. What I currently have is a UserControl in a project (thanks Reed!) and I'm able to bring that into another project via reference. I plan to add more controls over time to build something of an SDK.
I currently have some hooks that look for resources in the hosting application which either apply the resources to their respective properties, or style out the control via hard coded defaults.
Is it possible to set up resource dictionaries within the project containing the UserControls so they can use those references as the default, instead of hard coding? If so, how do I target them?
(I have a ResourceDictionary set up within the same project as the controls: Resources>Dictionaries>Colors.xaml)
Thanks in advance!
E
You should really look at creating custom templated controls in library rather than derivatives of UserControls. This will allow projects that reference your library to specify an alternative default style for you controls in the same way as we can for the controls in Microsofts own SDK.
The Creating a New Control by Creating a ControlTemplate topic on MSDN is good starter.
I think this is a better explanation, but i'm trying on a desktop application and i got the same problem.
XamlParseException: Failed to create a 'System.Type' from the text 'local:CustomerEntity'
If I'm undestanding correctly you want to create the file "generic.xaml" in the folder "Themes". However, I don't believe automatic styling works with UserControl only with Control. Generally if you trying to make a control that can be stylized and retemplated you want to inherit from Control and not UserControl.
I have a Silverlight application that is built from a set of Silverlight class libraries. I would like to create a common Silverlight library that contains a set of resources used to define the styles used for all the Silverlight UI libraries. This would be simlar to the <Styles>'s defined in the node within App.xaml file.
Is this possible? And if so, how would I implement?
While this is possible using WPF (via Dynamic Resources, see this video and fast forward to 12:00), I don't think this is possible yet in Silverlight. The closest thing you have to this is the themes in the Silverlight toolkit. There is a comment on that page by the team stating that you can't change themes (or resource styles) at runtime in Silverlight 2:
unruledboy, We do not support changing themes at run-time as this is not an ability supported by the Silverlight framework.
So I think themes is the closest thing available right now.