Silverlight 4 Context Menu: Maintain ability to launch Silverlight Configuration Box - silverlight

I love being able to add my own context menus to my application but I've run into a bit of a dilemma, how do I override the menu for my entire app (video player) and also provide the user ability to go into the Silverlight Configuration dialog.
For reference I'm talking about the following dialog box
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc645084%28VS.95%29.aspx
Does anyone know of a way to launch this via code? If there isn't this a bit of an oversight on MS' giving us the ability to do our own context menus. I know with Flash one can add new things into the default right click menu.

Was informed by MS that this is not possible in SL4

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Minimize application during active ProgressDialog

Is there a way to give the user the option to minimize the application while showing the ProgressDialog?
controller = await dialogCoordinator.ShowProgressAsync(this, "Header", "Message, please wait...");
It currently remains opened and user is unable to minimize or move the window.
We've had the same requirement on our Application which lead us to develop our own ProgressBar control and place it on a layer on top of the Application, in the MainView which left the top bar including the minimize and maximize buttons - working.
The problem you are describing is general and has nothing to do with the dialog you are displaying. If mahapps.metro is really just a toolkit, standard solutions should work
Appplication.MainWindow.WindowState = WindowState.Minimized
If this still doesn't work for you, it means that you are in the "framework in the framework" situation and have to get out of the box using some win32 interop like ShowWindow(...)
Hi we also faced this issue, after lots of months of searching in google and gitter ,
I found that there is a property in the metroWindow class (which is this,in the author example)
metroWindow.ShowDialogsOverTitleBar
once I set it to false , I was able to minimize my application via the title bar ,
hopes it helps anyone.

Behaviours in wpf apps Microsoft expression blend 4

I am using Microsoft expression blend 4 and i want to add a simple button,in a wpf application, which by clicking it(on "Run Project" mode) navigates the user to another existing wpf application in expression blend 4.This can be done by using a method but maybe I used the wrong method or i used the right method the wrong way.To be more specific i dragged on the button(that i want to make the task i mentioned) the "Launch UriOrFile Action" method but i realised(by making experiments with various files on desktop and using internet url's) that i can only link the running wpf application with random files or internet sites and not to another wpf application as i wanted(when i put the path of the wpf application it pops up a window saying"windows explorer has stopped working",something that didnt occured when i put random file's paths or internet sites url's).If anyone understands my problem let me know!thanks!!
Check out Process.Start. Create a command that fires code that calls that method.

Silverlight OOB User Menu Control

Well ... at the risk of sounding like I really don't know anything about programming, I have a question about controls in Silverlight 5.
I have an OOB App that I am working with, but I need to add the User Menus (File, Edit, etc.) that are normally seen at the top of all apps. There used to be a control in VS (the Menu control) that was easily configurable. What is the control used to create the User Menus in Silverlight 5? The Context Menu is not what I am asking about. That is the right mouse click menu ... so that's not the answer ...
Please, understand my problem. It's been since Silverlight 2 since I worked in Silverlight. I appreciate any information you kind folks would be willing to provide.
There is no such thing available directly from Microsoft (meaning it's neither built-in or present in the Silverlight Toolkit).
You will have to use third-party controls such as DevExpress or Telerik.
EDIT: Some more advice in response to your comment.
Another possibility is to create UIs from scratch. There are two forms of UIs that I found inspiring lately, both of which don't use any ribbons or drop-down menues at all. The first is to use "Windows 8"-like dashboards instead of traditional menues, the other is the Windows Azure Management Portal (a web application).
I don't use traditional UI frameworks for menues myself, but mostly because I don't like those approaches and I'm picky with how user interfaces should work and look like.
But obviously you have to make a serious time investment to go new ways. And it will heavily depend on your application what approach makes sense.
Here's one simple approach that could work in a number of cases, I used it for a database application (I call it the Windows-Phone-7/8 approach):
The screen is divided into the "page" area and information bars. The information bars contain no menues, just who's logged on, a back-button, a home-button, and context-sensitive buttons depending on what's in the view. So basically it behaves like a web browser and you navigate through the app by clicking on "links" (buttons that take you elsewhere).
There's only one page area, so no windows and no popups. I've gone to the extreme of making even dialog windows to be pages.
Now you need menues. You do that with "dashboards", ie. pages that present some overview stuff and buttons that lead to the other areas of your application.
Although you could have action buttons like save or delete on the page itself, I put them in the bottom bar (but they are still dependent on the page your on) - that is exactly how it works in Windows Phone 7/8.
One last advice: The real effort is usually not in the menus anyway. Beside your application logic itself, it's a lot of little things like login screen, error handling and how to present error messages (look at the windows azure management portal for how they did that really nicely) and gracefully failing on session timeout. There's also a lot of nuisance on how you manage your data (ria-services, etc.).
So as long as you don't need fancy data grid grouping, rich-text edit or excel-like pivot controls, a toolkit might not help you as much as you'd hope - because they give you only the controls, not the entire UI.

How to have multiple windows in one WPF Application?

I'm relatively new to the WPF world and I'm working on an application where I need to have multiple windows in one application. Like Photoshop when the user clicks on "New" button a new window opens and the old existing window(s) goes in the background. The toolbar and the statusbar, however, stay on top, untouched.
I would also like to add the feature that the user can work with multiple windows if each of them is not maximized.
How do I achieve this?
I apologize if I'm a bit unclear in framing my question.
What you are (probably) talking about is an MDI Application. "Unfortunately" WPF does not support that natively. I use quotes because it is more frowned upon in modern UI development than it was in the past.
Instead, the most common "WPF way" of doing this is to open each New window in a new tab in a tab control (like Visual Studio and most web browsers do).
If you really want to do an MDI application, Google search that, but to warn you, it probably means creating your own Window manager.
An alternative is to open non-modal windows, with their ShowInTaskbar property set to false. This gives you the ability to open as many windows as you want, but you lose the ability to contain them within a centralized workspace app.

Windows App Focus: Why does it require a click?

When I have 2 apps open and one has the focus but I want to execute a command in the other app, it requires a click to regain focus and another to execute the command. Is there some good reason why I couldn't take focus on MouseOver? I'm working with a WPF app if that is pertinent. TIA
EDIT: Oddly enough the MouseOvers work without focus.
I would not recommend doing this. This is not a standard way of working in Windows, so you will confuse your users. People are used to clicking into an application (or tabbing) to provide focus.
However, this is a configurable setting via the Accessability Tools in Windows. It can be enabled by choosing "Activate a window by hovering over it with the mouse" globally. Let your users specify this behavior if they want it.
The setting is configurable at a system-wide level. You should never ever override the user's current setting regarding this.
MS Windows Vista -- focus follows mouse (There's also a link on how to do it on XP.)
Edit: Normally, you can click a button on a form and both bring focus to the window and click it at the same time. The origins of the current setting "eating" the initial mouse click that brings focus to a window started as a fix to a bug in the Ribbon UI. The discussion is somewhere in this video: The Story of the Ribbon. Sorry I can't narrow it down more than that, but at least the video is a great insight and work watching - maybe you can send a message to Jensen Harris if you need a faster answer.
Edit 2: I just added a button to a WPF window, and I'm able to click it as long as I can see it - whether or not the window has focus.
You can take focus on MouseOver manually

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