I've got a WPF application in C# that starts off with a loading dialog. As expected, a button for the app shows up in the Windows taskbar.
I would like to detect right-clicks that might be done to that button.
Ultimately, I hope to disable the right-click or simply have the loading dialog regain focus. I've seen that some people use custom libraries and packages (interop, for example) to achieve some Win32 functionality, but I'd personally like to avoid this. Furthermore, these libraries/packages appear to be specific to Windows Forms; I've not seen anything for WPF. Is it impossible to manipulate the taskbar's right-click in WPF?
Can you not just set ShowInTaskbar="False" on the window?
You can set ShowInTaskbar="False" on the window, and then once you are done loading set it back to true in code-behind.
Related
out current application is a DevExpress Ribbon window. However, we have some legacy code - including a WPF Control which was hosted through a WinForms Window - with WPF Host. (please dont ask why)
I wanted to change the UserControl at least to a Wpf Window to get rid of WinForms.
Now here is my Problem: All stlyes get totally messed up. Especially my buttons have a problem:
The buttons lose their assigned Images, and also Background and Foreground is not assignable. Through the Live Visual Tree from Studio I see that it is overridden.
I guess the thing with images leads to the same root cause.
I dont want to redo the whole window again in DevExpress (if this is the cause).
Is there a way for a window to not use some application styles and run as default? Or how can I find out, what is actually overriding everything?
I finally found the solution. The DevExpress was overriding any styles of any form in application, settings something to the DevExpress.Xpf.CoreTemeManager.
To disable a style, I had to add the following thing to my window:
<Window x:Class="AnotherWindow"
xmlns:dx="http://schemas.devexpress.com/winfx/2008/xaml/core"
dx:ThemeManager.ThemeName="NoneName"
<!-- ...-->
</Window>
Also include DevExpress.Data and DevExpress.Xpf.Core references.
I'm not sure that's the right way to say it, but what I want is to for my wpf main window to have it's own bar that will behave like a taskbar, and any children windows that will be open from the main one will be placed in that bar in a similar way like the taskbar works in windows - a rectangle showing the window name for example, on click it opens you the window, if you click minimize it will minimize it to the bar, and with some option, to get it out of the main window and move it to the real windows taskbar, with another option for putting it back in. The problem is I don't know if this is even possible, and I don't know the name of such an element, so if anyone can give me any tips I'll be really thankful.
I worked on an application years ago (.NET 3.0: first WPF release!) that did exactly that. We ran into a lot of issues getting it to work, but we were pretty successful in the end. One thing we didn't support was moving it to the Windows taskbar.
The best option would be to set an attached property on each Window. This would register a Window with your custom taskbar, so if you wanted to move the Window out of your custom bar, you'd set the property to false. Setting the property to true would add it to the collection of application windows, as well as register event handlers to track the state of the Window.
One of the major pain points for us was getting the Window animations correct. If you're not running in XP, this probably less of an issue, as the animations in Vista (or is it 7?) and above aren't really showing where a Window is going on minimize. In the end, we had to do a lot of low level Win32 (p/Invoke) work for this.
Take a look at AvalonDock and WPF MDI:
http://avalondock.codeplex.com/
http://wpfmdi.codeplex.com/
We've been working on an application for the last few months that's aimed at Windows 7 tablet PCs. So we've used the Surface 2 SDK for most controls and it's all touch-happy.
I have noticed recently, though, that one of our custom controls isn't working as it should. This control provides popout menus, and these are achieved through the Popup control. On a developer's laptop, this works fine and the menus vanish when you click away from them. I've noticed, though, that on our test tablet they have a tendency to stay open.
I found that there was a SurfacePopup in the first Surface SDK, but I can't find one in the Surface 2 SDK. Did they get rid of it? Is there a 'best practice' approach?
If there's no simple solution, I may have to go old-school and add a window-sized hidden SurfaceButton below the menu when it appears, that hides itself and the menu when clicked or touched.
Beyond that I've noticed that sometimes the SurfaceScrollViewer within the popups won't work. I'm guessing this is because it's not picking up touch events properly. I tried adding this extension method to the window..
this.EnableSurfaceInput();
..but I get a NullReferenceException on System.Windows.Input.Mouse.get_LeftButton() which bizarrely suggests that it can only enable surface inputs for controls when there's a mouse plugged in.
Any ideas? They'll all be welcomed with open arms!
There's no SurfacePopup in the Surface SDK 2.0, however you can use a normal WPF popup. Then you need to make sure that it receives Touch Events by using the extension method you suggested above on the popup, not the window:
((HwndSource)HwndSource.FromVisual(popup)).EnableSurfaceInput();
Edit: As I just found out, this only works when the popup is initially open. To get it to work when the popup is opened later on, you don't need to use the popup, but the parent of it's child (see this question).
For the benefit of Daniel, and anyone else who needs a solution to this, I'll try to cast my mind back two years and explain how we got this working.
As far as I can remember, the answer was to use an adorner layer instead of a popup. Basically, every WPF control has an adorner layer, which sits above the control's UI stack. By default it contains nothing, but you can add whatever you like to it.
I got this all working by writing a custom control that allows you to place that control, with content, in the XAML and then show and hide it whenever you need to. When it's shown, it moves its contents into the adorner layer of the containing window, and when it's hidden it moves the contents back into the control itself, which is hidden from the user.
Afraid I can't go into any more detail than that, but as far as I can remember this was the ultimate solution; replacing popups (which never quite worked very well) with a custom control that uses the adorner layer.
Hope that helps!
I'm developing a phone app and need a modal dialog with some "rich" content - a few text boxes and a drop down. OK, not very rich but more than a MessageBox. :>
In regular Silverlight I know there's the ChildWindow control - but can't find the equivalent in Phone 7.
How have other folks done rich popup dialogs on the phone?
Thanks!
Silverlight actually has a control called a Popup. Here's the MSDN documentation.
It's incredibly simple to use (just set IsOpen to true to dispay) and quite effective. The only reason you might use a Panel with manual state control would be is you want precision control over animations etc.
Where I've seen people implement something like this they just have added a panel to the page and made this visible to act as a modal popup.
If you do this, be sure to handle use of the back button correctly.
Actually, there is ChildWindow on Windows Phone 7 in System.Windows.Controls library.
These are some examples:
http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/uploadfile/raj1979/how-to-implement-childwindow-in-windows-phone-7/
http://blog.deepwire.co.uk/?p=434
http://www.31a2ba2a-b718-11dc-8314-0800200c9a66.com/2011/06/how-to-create-childwindow-login-popup.html
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