How do I make silverlight button transparent while showing the image? - silverlight

I have a button that is programatically created, it's content is a stack panel with an image and a textblock. This all works great.
I want to make the button behind the image and text transparent, so that the image and text looks like it's sitting on the background, but still have all the properties of the button (i.e. someone clicks in the button region it still registers the button click event).
I have been playing with opacities, but every opacity I play with dealing with the button seems to set the whole button (image and text included) to that opacity value as well.
How can I make the button opaque while making the text and image content still visible?
Oh, this is silverlight 3. Thanks in advance.

You are going to have to template the button and remove the gradients, focus element, etc that you don't want to keep from the default style for a button. It sounds like you probably just want to keep the content presenter and get rid of the background and mouse over "glow" gradients. You will probably have to set the background of your StackPanel content to be transparent if you want the entire button area to intercept mouse events and not just the underlying image and text content.
Scott Gu has a good tutorial here on the basics of creating a control template.
If you are using Expression Blend it's very easy to right-click on the button and choose Edit Template -> Edit a Copy to copy the default style into a new style resource for the button where you can then manipulate the template right in Blend.

You can override the template property of the button to make an empty grid, like so:
<Button>
<Button.Template>
<ControlTemplate TargetType="Button">
<Grid />
</ControlTemplate>
</Button.Template>
</Button>
This could be set as a reusable style if needed.

Related

Command is invoked only if user press on particular area of button content

I am a newbe on wpf. I need a control like that
It should work like a button. It should change background color on IsMouseOver and on IsPressed. But click should be triggered and command invocked only when user clicks the cross. Is there a way to restrict clickable area for button with providing some custom content or template?
Instead of trying to make a whole button-control with just a "partly"- button I would instead do it with a stackpanel or grid.
<StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal">
<Textblock>Some Text</Textblock>
<Button source="YourImage"/>
</StackPanel>
Now you can decide width,heigt and those properties you see fit. To make your Textblock and button to change background if the mouse is over, I would look over Style's and Trigger's
Here is a link to a tutorial

Image Button with no border that works like a toolbar button?

I want a button that
Displays an image with NO border, NO background, NO text
If I tab into the imagebutton, THEN it shows the background and border
Also if I hover over it, it shows the background and border
I've searched and I've tried so many different things, but nothing it exactly what I want. I've tried setting various properties on the button to make the background and border transparent, but it still shows up. I've tried a style with a custom control template. I'd rather not have to completely reinvent all the triggers etc to get the button to render on mouse over. The biggest problem with custom control template is that then I loose all existing functionality and I'm basically building a new control from the ground up.
Here is another link that came closest to what I wanted but it doesn't properly work for me.
How do you completely remove the button border in wpf? - BUT.... for some reason the hover effect gets stuck. One I mouse over the image and the button border draws, it stays stuck on until I click somewhere else.
Actually, you will want to override the control template. You're not "losing" any functionality (aside from the UI triggers).
Original/Default Template -- This is a good starting point... copy/paste that into you're XAML (wherever you want to style this button... ie Button resources, UserControl/Window resources, App Resources?). From there make your adjustments.
Another easy way is to use Expression Blend. You can easily create a new template based on the existing template, and the styling/authoring tools it provides are much better than hand-coding XAML (unless you're good at doing that).
As far as displaying an image instead of text, just set the image as the content. A Button is a type of ContentControl which means that it can house any type of content (Object).

WPF: How to change button content (text) with a double click at runtime

I have a button in WPF, I want to change the text when I double click on it, that is I want the cursor to appear and type the text that is to be shown as the content (similar behavior as when pressing F2 on a desktop shortcut).
I guess I could detect a double click and then show a textbox with a transparent background, that will get me the cursor, type the text in this new textbox, set it to the buttons content and delete the textbox, but that doesn't seem the right way to do it.
I guess what I had in mind, is that I am developing a diagramming tool using shapes. Since shape doesn't derive from ContentControl I cannot put a text box inside it, and I want to simulate this behavior. I was thinking of making a custom control but that might be too much work for this, and am not quite familiar with this topic yet. I guess another approach would be to use an adorner (maybe a border) and since it derives from contentcontrol I can do the same thing as joe suggested. any ideas?
Another thing I could do would be to put the shape in a grid, and then put the textbox on top of the shape, but I am not sure how would that be as a design principle, and also I don't know if the hit testing would only be on the shape or the grid.
Since this is WPF, you can put a TextBox inside your Button with no trouble. If you don't want the textbox to have a border and white background -- i.e., if you want it to look like you're just typing directly into the button -- then you could remove them by setting BorderWidth to 0 and Background to Transparent.
What you probably want to do is have your Button's Content be a Grid that contains both the normal content (probably a TextBlock) and the TextBox, with the TextBox initially hidden (Visibility = Collapsed). Then when you get the double-click event, you would hide the TextBlock and show the TextBox.
<Button>
<Grid>
<TextBlock Name="buttonText">Double-click to rename me</TextBlock>
<TextBox Name="buttonEdit" Visibility="Collapsed" MinWidth="100"/>
</Grid>
</Button>

Image button Custom Control, silverlight

I am trying to build the Image button by setting
<Button.Content>
<Image Source="..."/>
</Button.Content>
Everything is Fine but i am not able to set the Visual States when button is clicked i wanted to something like Flash on top of button (Blue Purple Theme).
One more thing I need to create around 10 such button with different Images I think Custom Control works fine.
Any help is appretiated.
Thanks
Lavanya
You'll want to re-template your Button(s) and wrap that up into a Style.
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/pages/silverlight-tutorial-part-7-using-control-templates-to-customize-a-control-s-look-and-feel.aspx
Then use the VisualStateManager (easiest from within Blend 3) to change the visual properties on various states.
http://silverlight.net/learn/tutorials/stylestemplatesvsm-cs/

WPF changing button background color when the window is disabled

I have a button with a transparent background on a wpf window.
Problem is, when I open up another window with a .showdialog the form becomes disabled as does the button, causing the button to go white (and stick out like a sore thumb); the same happens to the listview and textbox controls. Labels and group boxes aren't impacted in this way and remain looking fine.
How do I preserve the transparency color of the button, listview and textboxes when they are disabled?
Thanks, Rob
I'm not sure what your button template looks like, I would recommend posting your XAML. But check out the MSDN Docs on Button Templating

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