I have a model dialog consisting of a datagrid, and OK button, and a Cancel button. It probably should be resizable.
What settings for WindowStyle, etc., would you recommend?
If you are asking what technically is involved in displaying a modal window, then it just has to be shown with the ShowDialog() method call. The call will block until the user closes the window.
By default, a window will be shown with a WindowStyle of SingleBorderWindow and the user should be able to resize it.
You may also want to look at the property ShowInTaskbar if you don't want the dialog to appear in the taskbar.
Here's a link to the MSDN docs on the Window class for reference.
This question is nearly impossible to answer with the details given (what does the dialog do? what is the design of your application?), so the only answer I feel can be given is: be consistent.
Make your dialog look as much like the rest of your application as possible, although depending on that design, you may want to draw attention to it a little bit more than your "regular" windows to make sure that it is acknowledged.
You probably want to set the owner of the dialog to the calling window, and you probably want to WindowStartupLocation to be CenterOwner.
Related
Is there a way to make an entire WPF Window inert after a button click?
The window is invoked via Window.ShowDialog() and after use, the window is no longer needed for interaction but I leave it open to remind the user of the inputs in TextBox's, ListBox's, and give visual feedback via OxyPlot and so on. I leave it to the user to close the window manually.
One solution is to disable all buttons but that's tedious and it still leaves TextBox's functioning. That's not optimal because for anything to be functioning creates the wrong impression that the Window remains for anything other than looking at. It would be better for every control to be non-functioning by a single setting.
I did it by putting a name on the WPF window code behind and then setting .IsEnabled false upon the appropriate button click. All buttons, combo boxes, text boxes, and even OxyPlot became inert at that point and most parts were greyed out.
Consider creating a dedicated boolean dependency property in your code-behind or viewmodel and binding IsEnabled of every TextBox to the property.
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.
How can I add custom buttons to the existing MessageBox in WPF? Apart from the usual Ok and Cancel buttons, I need to add 3 more buttons and also handle their events.
Short answer: No it is not possible, you need to write a new window.
Long answer: the MessageBox class uses the Win32 MessageBox (or maybe MessageBoxEx) function, this function does not support extending the message box.
It is possible to modify the message box after it is opened, but:
It is a lot of work
It isn't supported
you have to do it using Win32 directly, the message box window is not WPF or even WinForms.
All in all, it's less work to write a window with one TextBlock, one Image and 5 buttons than to mess around with internal implementation details of the MessageBox code.
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.
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.