I'm curious if anyone knows of a way to easily get a double border effect in WPF similar to what you see in the selected items in Windows Explorer in Windows 7.
If you look closely, you'll notice that the selected item has a dark border, a lighter, inner-border, and then a gradient background.
Currently, I'm using two borders around an object any time I want to achieve this effect. Doing it that way is ugly syntactically and really muddies my view xaml. Being a web developer at heart I'd like to separate the xaml structure from the style as much as possible. So, I've started putting this into Styles and Content Templates in order to pull it out of my view xaml.
However, I'm curious if there may be a better way to go about this.
I played around for a while using a VisualBrush as a background to try to get the effect. However, I want to be able to apply the background to elements that can be any size and the way the VisualBrush stretched the visual to fit the element background didn't work the way I wanted it to. Essentially, I'd really just like it to stretch the visual the way the WPF layout system would do it.
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
--
Dusty
A VisualBrush is probably not what you want to do in this scenario, as it's pretty heavy.
You can solve the problem with some Xaml without nesting borders.
For example,
<Border BorderBrush="#FF00B5C5" BorderThickness="1" CornerRadius="2" Background="White">
<Grid Background="#FF00B5C5" Margin="1">
<Rectangle Fill="#FFA2F2FE" />
<TextBlock Text="This is some text" VerticalAlignment="Center"/>
</Grid>
</Border>
You can, of course, tweak the properties to get the look you need.
EDIT: If you want to create a style, so you can reskin the look-and-feel, you can do something like this:
<Window.Resources>
<Style x:Key="BorderedTextBlock" TargetType="ContentControl">
<Setter Property="ContentTemplate">
<Setter.Value>
<DataTemplate>
<Border BorderBrush="#FF00B5C5" BorderThickness="1" CornerRadius="2" Background="White">
<Grid Background="#FF00B5C5" Margin="1">
<Rectangle Fill="#FFA2F2FE" />
<TextBlock Text="{Binding}" VerticalAlignment="Center"/>
</Grid>
</Border>
</DataTemplate>
</Setter.Value>
</Setter>
</Style>
</Window.Resources>
<Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot">
<ContentControl Style="{StaticResource BorderedTextBlock}" Content="This is some text" Width="200" Height="24"/>
</Grid>
Additionally, turn this into a custom control with all the styling and theming parameters that you need.
Hope that helps,
Sergio
Related
I want to add an exclamation mark Image to the left of the built-in TextBox and make it visible whenever the TextBox Validation.HasError attached property is true, otherwise hide it.
How can I use ControlTemplate to add the Image without having re-bind all the TextBox properties?
<StackPanel>
<StackPanel.Resources>
<ControlTemplate x:Key="TextBoxWithIndicator" TargetType="{x:Type TextBox}">
<StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal">
<!-- Re-bind {Binding Path=Property}, including some that I may miss -->
<TextBox Text="{TemplateBinding Text}" Width="{TemplateBinding Width}" Height="{TemplateBinding Height}"/>
<Image Source="resources/exclaim.png" Visibility="{TemplateBinding Validation.HasError}"/>
</StackPanel>
</ControlTemplate>
</StackPanel.Resources>
<TextBox Template="{StaticResource TextBoxWithIndicator}" Width="120">Happy Go Lucky</TextBox>
</StackPanel>
Note The preceding block of code represents my futile effort in WPF so far. It is probably also wrong on several counts, e.g. probably need a ValueConverter for Visibility <--> Validation.HasError; Setting Width="120" on TextBox seems to adjust the StackPanel width instead of TextBox width despite the TemplateBinding, etc.
I would suggest looking into Adorners. These are special FrameworkElements that are rendered in a special Adorner Layer on top of visual elements, and are intended to provide visual cues to the user.
The above link provides a summary of Adorners as well as an example of a Custom Adorner.
I've been working in WPF for quite a while, but there's something basic about styling that I just don't get.
How can I set the foreground and background colors for a Menu control? I started with this:
<Menu IsMainMenu="True" Background="#FF3A3A3A" Foreground="White">
<MenuItem Header="_File">
<MenuItem Header="_Exit">
</MenuItem>
</MenuItem>
</Menu>
The foreground color is apparently inherited by the MenuItem, but the background is not. Next attempt:
<Menu IsMainMenu="True" Background="#FF3A3A3A" Foreground="White">
<MenuItem Background="#FF3A3A3A" Header="_File">
<MenuItem Header="_Exit">
</MenuItem>
</MenuItem>
</Menu>
Now the highlight/overlay colors aren't right when the menu is activated, and I don't see an obvious property to set them. In addition, the menu popup has a wide, white border, and I don't see how to change it's color (or size), either.
What am I missing?
You will want to learn more about templates and styles in WPF (XAML really). In XAML, how a control looks and how a control operates are two completely different things. In your example, you may have a Foreground and Background property, but the style\template of the control my not utilize these properties for the display of the control.
Read http://wpftutorial.net/Templates.html and http://wpftutorial.net/TemplatesStyles.html, they will give you a good and quick overview. For a more in depth look, read this: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee230084.aspx
If you are using Visual Studio 2012 to edit your WPF UI, you can easily create a copy of the style\template the menu control is using, and then edit it. If you are using Visual Studio 2010, you should download and install (it may or may not be free) Expression Blend to edit your XAML UI.
Tip: If you are using Visual Studio 2012, make sure your Document Outline window pane is visible all the time. This is very handy for editing a XAML UI. Mine defaulted to being collapsed on the left side of the program. This pane is visible in Expression Blend by default.
Find the MenuItem control in the Document Outline. Right-click on it and select Edit Template->Edit a Copy...
This will create a copy of the existing look-and-feel of the menu item for you to edit. When you do this, you will be in editing mode of that template, to "pop out" of that mode, click on the little icon on the top left of the Document Outline window.
When editing the template, you can see the layout and design of the template. When a menu item is being as the drop-down part, it's really displayed like a Popup menu (right click menu). Looking through that template, what pops out at me right away is this color resource named SubMenuBackgroundBrush:
<SolidColorBrush x:Key="SubMenuBackgroundBrush" Color="#FFF5F5F5"/>
If you do a search for SubMenuBackgroundBrush you can see that it is used on a part named PART_Popup:
<Popup x:Name="PART_Popup" AllowsTransparency="true" Focusable="false" HorizontalOffset="1" IsOpen="{Binding IsSubmenuOpen, RelativeSource={RelativeSource TemplatedParent}}" PopupAnimation="{DynamicResource {x:Static SystemParameters.MenuPopupAnimationKey}}" Placement="Bottom" VerticalOffset="-1">
<Themes:SystemDropShadowChrome x:Name="Shdw" Color="Transparent">
<Border x:Name="SubMenuBorder" BorderBrush="#FF959595" BorderThickness="1" Background="{StaticResource SubMenuBackgroundBrush}">
<ScrollViewer x:Name="SubMenuScrollViewer" Margin="1,0" Style="{DynamicResource {ComponentResourceKey ResourceId=MenuScrollViewer, TypeInTargetAssembly={x:Type FrameworkElement}}}">
<Grid RenderOptions.ClearTypeHint="Enabled">
<Canvas HorizontalAlignment="Left" Height="0" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="0">
<Rectangle x:Name="OpaqueRect" Fill="{StaticResource SubMenuBackgroundBrush}" Height="{Binding ActualHeight, ElementName=SubMenuBorder}" Width="{Binding ActualWidth, ElementName=SubMenuBorder}"/>
</Canvas>
<Rectangle Fill="#F1F1F1" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="1,2" RadiusY="2" RadiusX="2" Width="28"/>
<Rectangle Fill="#E2E3E3" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="29,2,0,2" Width="1"/>
<Rectangle Fill="White" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="30,2,0,2" Width="1"/>
<ItemsPresenter x:Name="ItemsPresenter" KeyboardNavigation.DirectionalNavigation="Cycle" Grid.IsSharedSizeScope="true" Margin="2" SnapsToDevicePixels="{TemplateBinding SnapsToDevicePixels}" KeyboardNavigation.TabNavigation="Cycle"/>
</Grid>
</ScrollViewer>
</Border>
</Themes:SystemDropShadowChrome>
</Popup>
This is the popup that you see when you right-click on something that shows a menu, or a dropdown menu. Change the references from: {StaticResource SubMenuBackgroundBrush} to {TemplateBinding Foreground}.
When you run the program, you'll see that the main background of the popup has changed, but the area where the icon is displayed has not. These are all the <Rectangle Fill=" items in the popup control too. Change those also. The last reference to Rectangle looks like its the line splitting the icon and the text, you may not what to change that.
Enjoy the wonderful world of templates. It looks confusing and like a lot of work. It is. But when you get the hang of it, it's a very cool system. It's hard to go back to any other UI system after you get the hang of it.
What am I missing?
Controls are more or less customizable, and there are two levels of customizing a control:
Setting properties like Foreground, Background, etc, in the XAML where you place the control.
Setting the Template in your Style for the control, and creating your own ControlTemplate.
The second is more involved, but it offers much more flexibility in making the control look how you want. If this case, it sounds like that's what you'll need. Check out the default ControlTemplate for Menu and MenuItem. You can copy/paste them and modify as needed.
<Window.Resources>
<Style TargetType="{x:Type Menu}">
<Setter Property="Template">
<ControlTemplate TargetType="{x:Type Menu}">
<!-- your modified template here -->
</ControlTemplate>
</Setter>
</Style>
<Style TargetType="{x:Type MenuItem}">
<Setter Property="Template">
<ControlTemplate TargetType="{x:Type MenuItem}">
<!-- your modified template here -->
</ControlTemplate>
</Setter>
</Style>
</Window.Resources>
I have a page in my WP7 app consisting of a TextBox beside a ListPicker. In their default modes, they don't line up properly; the ListPicker has a different padding to the TextBox, and its height is also different.
<Grid x:Name="ContentPanel" Grid.Row="1" Margin="12,0,12,0">
<StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal">
<TextBox HorizontalAlignment="Left" TextWrapping="Wrap" Text="TextBox" VerticalAlignment="Top"/>
<toolkit:ListPicker Width="170" ItemsSource="{Binding l}" Style="{StaticResource ListPickerStyle1}" VerticalAlignment="Top"/>
</StackPanel>
</Grid>
Manually tweaking the ListPicker's template to fit in correctly here is tricky and error prone. For example, when its height is adjusted, the caption (i.e. the text of the selected item) is no longer in the centre of the component.
My app is currently failing MS app review because the components are not all the same height.
Is there an easy way for me to set the toolkit:ListPicker to have the same appearance as a TextBox?
The simplest solution will be to take a copy of the the default style and tweak that using Blend to be exactly how you want it to look. This will take a little trial and error to sort out.
You can then use the implicit styling rules to apply it to all ListPickers without having to explicitly set the style on each instance:
<Style x:Key="MyListPickerStyle
TargetType="toolkit:ListPicker>
.... your tweaks here
</Style>
<Style TargetType="toolkit:ListPicker"
BasedOn="{StaticResource MyListPickerStyle}" />
It may be easier to tweak the TextBox Style of course :)
I have an ItemsControl in my user control with a scroll viewer around it for when it gets too big (Too big being content is larger than the viewable area of the UserControl). The problem is that the grid that it is all in just keeps expanding so that the scroll viewer never kicks in (unless I specify an exact height for the grid). See code below and thanks in advance.
<UserControl x:Class="BusinessObjectCreationWizard.View.TableSelectionPageView"
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml">
<GroupBox FontWeight="Bold" Height="300px"
Header="Tables"
Padding="2">
<ScrollViewer>
<ItemsControl FontWeight="Normal"
ItemsSource="{Binding Path=AvailableTables}">
<ItemsControl.ItemTemplate>
<DataTemplate>
<CheckBox Content="{Binding Path=DisplayName}"
IsChecked="{Binding Path=IsSelected}"
Margin="2,3.5" />
</DataTemplate>
</ItemsControl.ItemTemplate>
</ItemsControl>
</ScrollViewer>
</GroupBox>
</UserControl>
This user control is loaded here
<Border Background="White" Grid.Column="1" Grid.Row="0">
<HeaderedContentControl Content="{Binding Path=CurrentPage}"
Header="{Binding Path=CurrentPage.DisplayName}" />
</Border>
I would like to not specify the height.
If you remove the Height from your GroupBox (which, as far as I understand, is what you want to do), then it will fill its container, unless there's a panel upstream that imposes its own sizing rules.
I used this simplified version of your XAML. I removed the template and the binding, and hard-coded some items, to make this stand alone; those changes won't affect the way layout is done.
<Window xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation">
<GroupBox FontWeight="Bold" Header="Tables" Padding="2">
<ScrollViewer>
<ItemsControl FontWeight="Normal">
<TextBlock>Foo</TextBlock>
<TextBlock>Bar</TextBlock>
<TextBlock>Baz</TextBlock>
</ItemsControl>
</ScrollViewer>
</GroupBox>
</Window>
Run it, and you'll see that the content does indeed size to fit the window, and the scrollbar only enables when the window gets too small to see all three items. I believe this is what you want.
So the problem is most likely one of the parent panels, one you're not showing in your sample XAML. The problem you describe could occur if your GroupBox appears inside a StackPanel:
<Window xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation">
<StackPanel>
<GroupBox FontWeight="Bold" Header="Tables" Padding="2">
<ScrollViewer>
<ItemsControl FontWeight="Normal">
<TextBlock>Foo</TextBlock>
<TextBlock>Bar</TextBlock>
<TextBlock>Baz</TextBlock>
</ItemsControl>
</ScrollViewer>
</GroupBox>
</StackPanel>
</Window>
Now the GroupBox appears at the top of the Window, sized to exactly fit its contents. If you shrink the Window enough, the GroupBox will be cut off -- because it's sized to fit its content, not its container. This sounds like the problem you're describing.
The reason is that StackPanel asks its children what their ideal height is (based on their content), and uses that height. Without StackPanel (or something similar), the default is to respect the control's VerticalAlignment, and if that's set to the default value of Stretch, then the control is stretched to fill its parent. This means it won't be taller than its parent, which sounds like what you want.
Solution: remove the StackPanel (or whatever else is causing you problems) and use something else. Depending on what you're trying to accomplish, you might have better luck with a DockPanel or a Grid. Hard to tell without knowing more about your layout.
Edit: Okay, it looks like the problem is indeed the HeaderedContentControl parent -- but not directly. HeaderedContentControl isn't a panel, so it doesn't do any layout of its own (and its descendant, GroupBox, doesn't have this same problem). The problem is its default template -- which includes a StackPanel. The good news is, you're free to use a different template, let's say one with a DockPanel instead:
<Window xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml">
<HeaderedContentControl>
<HeaderedContentControl.Style>
<Style TargetType="{x:Type HeaderedContentControl}">
<Setter Property="Template">
<Setter.Value>
<ControlTemplate TargetType="{x:Type HeaderedContentControl}">
<DockPanel>
<ContentPresenter ContentSource="Header" DockPanel.Dock="Top"/>
<ContentPresenter/>
</DockPanel>
</ControlTemplate>
</Setter.Value>
</Setter>
</Style>
</HeaderedContentControl.Style>
<GroupBox FontWeight="Bold" Header="Tables" Padding="2">
<ScrollViewer>
<ItemsControl FontWeight="Normal">
<TextBlock>Foo</TextBlock>
<TextBlock>Bar</TextBlock>
<TextBlock>Baz</TextBlock>
</ItemsControl>
</ScrollViewer>
</GroupBox>
</HeaderedContentControl>
</Window>
If you leave off the <HeaderedContentControl.Style> part, this reproduces your problem; but with the style in place, it allows the GroupBox to fill its container, so the ScrollViewer will get a scrollbar when you want it to.
If the previous answer doesn't fix the problem, you could also try binding the Width, Height of your grid to the ActualWidth, ActualHeight of your parent UserControl. Something like:
<UserControl
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
x:Class="WpfApplication.UserControl1"
x:Name="UserControl">
<Grid Height="{Binding ElementName=UserControl, Path=ActualHeight}"
Width="{Binding ElementName=UserControl, Path=ActualWidth}" />
In this case you aren't setting an explicit width and height but you are limiting the Grids width/height to the constraints of the UserControl it sits in.
I had the same issue, after reading this response I replaced all StackPanels with Grids in UserControl. It resolved the Scrollbar issue.
Try removing the grid entirely and setting the HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment directly on the GroupBox. If a layoutpanel has only one child, it's often redundant... this migth be true in your case.
If that doesn't work... what's the parent of your grid control?
Why not just use a listbox instead of an itemscontrol, that has a built in scrollviewer.
They are different. If you do not want to have the items selectable, then don't use a ListBox. It is going to be heavier, and will also have the deselect a selection everytime the user clicks on an entry. Just put the ItemsControl in a ScrollViewer
I had the same problema with ListBox, it wasn't expanding and the scroll viewer didn't appear. I solved it as follows:
<UserControl x:Class="TesteView"
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml">
<Grid MaxHeight="710">
....
....
<StackPanel>
<ListBox MaxHeight="515"
ScrollViewer.HorizontalScrollBarVisibility="Hidden"
ScrollViewer.VerticalScrollBarVisibility="Auto"
ItemsSource="{Binding Path=Teste,Mode=TwoWay}">
....
....
</ListBox>
</StackPanel>
</Grid>
</UserControl>
I've got two sizing issue regarding a Window I've got. The basic layout is like this
<Window MaxHeight="{DynamicResource {x:Static SystemParameters.VirtualScreenHeight}}"
MaxWidth="{DynamicResource {x:Static SystemParameters.VirtualScreenWidth}}"
>
<StackPanel>
<DockPanel LastChildFill="False">
<StackPanel DockPanel.Dock="Left"
Orientation="Horizontal">
<!--Some buttons-->
</StackPanel>
<StackPanel DockPanel.Dock="Right"
Orientation="Horizontal">
<!--Some buttons-->
</StackPanel>
</DockPanel>
<ScrollViewer>
<WrapPanel x:Name="Container">
</WrapPanel>
</ScrollViewer>
</StackPanel>
</Window>
1) How do I made the Window not get smaller horizontally than the DockPanel's width?
2) How do I make the ScrollViewer be restricted to the limits of the Window? It is sizing itself to its contents, extending past the bounds of the Window.
It sort of used to work when I had
<Window><ScrollViewer/></Window>
, but I really don't want the DockPanel inside the scroller. In the current form, it is even forcing the Window to break its MaxHeight.
I would recommend you to use Grid with * Lenght instead of DockPanel and StackPanel.
Just get rid of those StackPanels. Replace them with Grids and you should be good. The layout logic of the StackPanel is such that it will give children as much room in a certain direction (perpendicular to the StackPanels orientation) as they ask for. That's why you're seeing the odd layout issues.