Multiple WPF popups in app - wpf

I'm developing a WPF app and I'm having an issue with popups. I understand the issue that a popup's zindex is higher than everything else. The problem I'm having is my app can have situations that there are more than one popups open at a time. When this happens, the last popup that opens is always on top of the other. I would really like the action to be, whichever popup gets clicked last is on top. I have a thumb on the popup so it can be dragged and I have a behaviour to control the dragging. I have noticed that I can call
popup.isopen = false and then popup.isopen = true in the thumb_drag event and the clicked popup shows on top, but it produces an undesirable flash when the popup closes and opens. I've dug through reflector and tried several thing (coecevalue on the IsOpenProperty, InvalidateVisual, etc.) and am having no luck. Has anyone had this same problem and been able to fix it?
Thanks

Maybe this can help? Its a Popup that is not topmost. Not sure if it will work in your scenario though but it may be worth a try
http://chriscavanagh.wordpress.com/2008/08/13/non-topmost-wpf-popup/

Related

Disabling content behind an in-page dialog in WPF

I have some simple code for popping up a "dialog"-like thing over part of my application window. The idea is, the user must dismiss the dialog before continuing to work with that part of the page.
This works by hovering a large semi-transparent rectangle over the part of the page that is supposed to be disabled - which does a nice enough job of blocking clicks to the region. You see this sort of thing a lot in WPF and Web apps, I think.
The problem I have is, the user can still reach all those juicy blocked controls by tabbing to them using the keyboard. "No problem", I hear you say, "just set the IsEnabled on the panel to false, thereby blocking keyboard access".
Unfortunately, disabling the controls:
Doesn't look very nice
Tends to have unintended consequences with custom styles and bindings further down the tree
So, is there a better way to disable a part of the page, without setting the "IsEnabled" property, such that it doesn't change the visual appearance of any of the controls?
Thanks,
Mark
Can you put your "dialog" XAML in a popup window? Then, call ShowDialog() on the window to make it a modal window? If you don't want your popup to look like a standard window, you could always syle it to remove borders, etc.
I solved this by subscribing to the PreviewGotKeyboardFocus event, from the parent element in the tree, and then handling the event such that focus never gets passed to the children.
Also, I had to explicitly remove focus from the "disabled" controls as well, of course.

Closing a WPF window when responding to doubleclick transfers doubleclick to the main window

I have seen similar issues reported but never answered. This is a major problem for me.
I have a WPF application which opens a new window using ShowDialog(). In the new Window I have a datagrid but it could be any type of object. When I handle the doubleclick event of a row I close the window. At this point the window closes but the control in the main window directly under where I clicked recieves the clicks.
I tried handling PreviewMouseButtonDown and looking for clickcount=2 instead of the doubleclick but that had the same effect. I tried setting e.Handled = true and that also had the same effect. I tried setting an owner on the window and no change. I tried modal as well as regular windows and no change. I responded to the PreviewMouseButtonDown for a single click and that worked but I absolutely need this to be a double click.
Problem is double-click event fires on 2nd mouse DOWN event. If you close the window as part of that event-handling, you're still about to receive a mouse UP event in whatever window was open behind the dialog.
I think the solution might be to set a flag during double-click handling and on mouse up, if the flag is set, close the window.
Ok, i had a similiar problem in our project and its somehow related. We never really fixed it, but now i gave it some more thoughts. And my guess is, because you close the window while you are in a progress of handling the input, this input processing is canceled, your window is closed, but the input request it still remains (because it was not handled before) thus your parent window gets to handle it.
So this is of course just a shot in the dark but would explain our problem.
So to give a solution:
You could instead of close the window, set up a Dispatcher Job using lower priority as Input and just close the window there. It should feel the same for the user but should consume the double click.
Again no guaranty it just sounds resonable in my head.
Good luck.

WPF Popup and WindowsFormsHost Problem

I am hosting windowsforms control in WPF popup. Problems below:
If i make StaysOpen=False i can't interact with winform control. StaysOpen to false is required because when clicked outsidet the Popup region, it should close.
if i make StaysOpen=True i can interact with winform control but when i click outside the area of popup, it is not getting closed.
I tried setting StaysOpen=true in MouseEnter of popup and StaysOpen=False in MouseLeave, but MouseLeave fires as and when mouse is over winform control resulting in unexpected behaviour.
I even tried IsMouseCaptureWithin property of popup and found it does not work with winforms (i guess its a bug in framework).
Another problem, i was trying to close popup when root main form (which is windows form) is deactivated (pressed Alt+Tab), but this event (deactivate) is fired even when i enter into one of the controls in windowshostControl in popup.
Desired Behaviour:
should be able to host and interact with winform control in wpf popup.
on clicking on outside the area of popup, popup should close.
Appreciate any inputs.
Thanks.
I've had many problems with the defacto-standard popups in WPF, because they are in fact a new window with their own handle. This means if you drag your application around the screen, the popup stays put (it doesn't move with your window). It also means your popup has some strange behaviors and doesn't interact with your application in ways other controls normally do.
I've created 2 decorator classes to address this problem:
PopupDecorator.cs and
TimeoutPopupDecorator.cs
It's pretty simple to use:
Add a namespace declaration for the new popup classes. i.e.
xmlns:dday_wpf="clr-namespace:DDay.WPF"
Surround the area you want the popup to be able to be displayed with the decorator. i.e.
<dday_wpf:PopupDecorator x:Name="popup">
<dday_wpf:PopupDecorator.Popup>
... contents of popup go here ...
</dday_wpf:PopupDecorator.Popup>
... contents of panel go here ...
</dday_wpf:PopupDecorator>
It works pretty much identically to a normal Popup from that moment on.
This may not solve all your problems, but hopefully it helps.
This sounds a bit like my problem launching a modeless winform control from a WPF form.
Check out my question Why is my WPF textbox "kinda" readonly?.
The just being, based on what Doug said about popups being a window with its own handle, makes this applicable.

Clip a wpf Popup at bounds of a main window

From what I understand, the popup exists within it's own visual tree. However, I've noticed a few properties, Clip and ClipToBounds. What I am wanting to do is Visually clip a popup at the right and bottom edges of a window regardless of the fact that the popup is independent of the bounds of the window. I'm not using XAML, but if somebody knows how to do it in XAML, then that's fine. I can get to the main window using System.Windows.Application.Current.MainWindow. Is it possible from this to get a value that I can use to clip the popup? I'm assuming that if there is a value that I can use, then I would be able to bind the clipping of the popup to that value. This is really not necessary since after the popup initially opens, if the window gets moved or resized, the popup closes. So I would really only need to clip the popup when it opens. The reason I would like to do this is because although I am using a popup, I don't want it to appear as a popup that exists outside of the window. FYI this is for a popup calendar for a custom datebox. Any ideas, as well as clarification of misconceptions that I may have, would be greatly appreciated.
Furthermore, the popup can be launched from a user control that is not directly on the Main Window. So in that case it would be easier to use a popup. As apposed to a UC inside the XAML
I know this is a year old post, but in case any others come here looking for answers... If you don't need the popup to be outside of your window, why use a popup at all? It'd be far easier to simply use a control in a canvas (for instance) and control it via its Visibility property. Then you'd automagically get your clipping.

Hiding Popup control when other window's in focus

I have a custom UserControl which tries to recreate auto-complete for a textbox. When user types, the text is used to filter a provided collection of items and then a Popup displays a ListBox with items that match what user have typed.
Unfortunately, if user decides to switch away from the application to another window (browser, MSWord, anything!), the Popup remains on top of every other window!
Also, if I move my window (which hosts the custom control) with the popup open, the popup stays in place (and doesn't follow the window)! It's kinda funny but obviously not acceptable behaviour. I've looked around but only found one post about this that went unanswered for two years :(
Actually, I didn't realize that I had StaysOpen property of the Popup set to true.
<Popup StaysOpen="False" />
actually does the trick for me.
I had the same problem in a similar scenario. What I did was I subscribed to all posible "lost focus" events of the control and also got the window which hosts the control and subscribed to its GotMouseCapture and LocationChanged events. Event handlers of all those events are setting the popup's IsOpen property to false.
You can get the hosting window with this:
parentWindow = Window.GetWindow(this);
all other code is simply a lot of subscribing to events to do the same thing.
P.S. I'm not saying it's a pretty or optimal solution, but it works fine for me :)
According to the Popup documentation:
When Popup is displayed on the screen, it does not reposition itself if its parent is repositioned.
So it does not look like it would be a very good candidate for an autocomplete textbox. I think the class is meant more for showing information when you hover over an item.

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