Expand Usercontrol to full window size - wpf

I am currently working on a project which has a tab control which contains a Wrap panel which contain a series of user controls. I am looking for a way to allow the user to select one user control and maximize it to the size of the tab control/window.
One thought is to simply remove all the other items from the panel.However I am attempting to use MVVM as much as possible and I'm not sure how much the user control should know about the panel. (The user control will contain a button to allow maximizing)
Is there a way to temporarily remove the usercontrol from the grid and treat it like a modal popup or just to fill the window?

How about having "Visible" or "Maximized" bool properties in the view model for each user control based item, and databind said user controls Visibility property to the appropriate property. Then bind your user controls maximize/restore button to command in the view model to change the VM properties appropriately?

Related

Changing the data in a specific area of a window, Caliburn.Micro, WPF

Here is my need. I think a user control is what I need but I am not sure if its the best or even how to use it.
What I have. My main window has a menu with a "help" menu. When you click help, a new window opens, I have a column, At the top of the left column has a drop down box of "Major Titles", a ListBox below that that populates based on the combo box selection. This will be about 25% of the window width. All this works.
When I select an item in the list box a page,contentControl or user control is displayed to the right with verticle scroll bars so the window does not need to resize, the information I display that changes based on the list box selection will have only visuals like text block, label, images. There will be no user interaction with the changeable pages Just formatted Data.
What would be the best way to approach this? Can anyone offer an easy example?
I was thinking of using a user control and change the user control based on the selected list box item.
Ok, I got this figured. After reading a lot of posts and blogs. Seems people sometimes want to make things more complicated then they actually are.
What I wanted, a permanent list box on the left 1/6 of the window. The list box contained string names for "help subjects". On the right 5/6 of the screen I added a groupbox with header and in group box I added a usercontrol. The content of the control is bound to a property called 'ActiveView'. The list box selected value property is bound to 'SelectedListItem' property.
When you change it set 'SelectedListItem' a method is called 'SetActiveControl'. SetActiveControl has a switch/case that sets like in the example:
``Case "Setup":
ActiveView = new SomeSelectionViewModel();
Break;
I have created a user control in a folder inside the Views folder called HelpControls, I also created the same folder in ViewModels. I have classes matching the user controls and everything is bound together.
Ultimately when you click the list box item, the associated ViewModel is called and in turn populates the user control on the window with the appropriate data.
I need to later look into, using one ViewModel for all the controls, I know that can be done using Cal:Model.View = ViewModel name. In the xaml of the control. I'm just not sure how to call the appropriate user control view when an item is selected. Either way this would become a view first design and I thought I read, Caliburn. Micro was intended as a ViewModel first design.

Locking controls on the canvas in a form editor in WPF

I am building a form editor in WPF. One of the features we need in it is to let the user "lock" one or more controls on the canvas. By locking I mean the user would not be able to move, resize or modify other properties of the control.
I have tried with ContentControl but did not get the results I am looking for.
I think you should use the IsEnabled property. Basic controls with interaction have this, and you can expose it on your custom controls as well and pass the property down.
If something is set with IsEnabled = false it will be grayed out and cannot be affected by user input.

WPF Control Grouping

I have a group of controls that look like this:
<Link to Image>
that i reuse a number of times. It's really simple a listview, 3 buttons and some layout panels.
I want to turn this into a reusable component but the columns in the listview can change and the sources they are bound to will change.
How do i go about this? i've seen many comparisons between ContentTemplates and UserControls etc but they never seem to be functional (eg Add will raise an event which i'll have to handle to add something to the listview, remove will raise an event where i'll likely ask if they are sure first).
I've accomplished the events with my own UserControl, but can't pass a list of GridViewColumns to the control. It also means i have to expose SelectedItem etc manually from the UserControl. Subclassing Listview seems promising for setup and access but doesn't conceptually seem right to have other controls in the listview area.
What is the right way?
I would definately recommend a UserControl. You should:
Add the controls you require to your user control
Add the Dependency Properties you require to your user control which allow you to configure it, e.g. SelectedItem
Wire up these dependency properties to the various controls within your user control. An easy way to do this is to set the DataContext of your user controls visual tree to the user control itself, e.g. if you have a Grid as the root for your user controls, set its DataContext = this in code. You can then use TwoWay bindings to connect up the various control properties to the user control properties.

Navigating a WPF Tab Control from within a User Control?

My WPF application consists of a main window with a tab control which has a series of tab items, each hosting a user control.
I'd like one of the user controls to be able to trigger the application to change focus from the current tab to a different one.
Is there a way for the user control to trigger its tab control container to change to another tab item?
The WPF system provides the RoutedEvent. This special kind of event can be created to be catched by every element in the tree. With this way you can fire the event inside your user control, and catch it in the TabControl that will do everything you need. The tab control can catch the event cause of it lies in the element's tree of your window.
You can start from here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms742806.aspx
You'll need a Bubble Event.
Hope this helps.
You can have a property that binds with SelectedItem property of TabControl.

Re-using Buttons in WPF

I have a bunch of different objects that are commonly edited in the same TabControl using different DataTemplates, but I want each DataTemplate to have a common look and feel with Ok and Cancel buttons at the bottom right of each tab that will close the tab or save the content and then close the currently selected tab. What's the best way to place buttons on each tab ? Is there a way to do it without copying and pasting the buttons and stack panel across all of my data templates ?
Sure, you can create your own OkCancelSaveControl. In WPF, creating a "user control" is much easier than it sounds. Here is a tutorial. In a nutshell, you
create a new user control,
create properties in the user control that give the your control the information it needs to perform its duties (e.g. the tab that it's supposed to close or the data object that it's supposed to save),
if necessary, create events that the user control raises (OkClick), in case some tab requires special treatment.
I would make a custom control, lets call it MyCoolTabItem, that inherits from the TabItem class, and just throw your buttons into the control. Then just add a MyCoolTabItem instead of a TabItem to all of your TabControls and it will have all of your buttons on it.
You could make a base view class that held those buttons. Views that needed the buttons would inherit them and common functionality.

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