I have ReportViewer winForms control for showing Microsoft Reports in my WPF application hosted over WindowsFormsIntegration.
When the MouseDown event of my textBlock triggers, I would like it to fade lets say from 0 to 100 visability, like some other elements in my Window. It doesn't, so I was wondering is it the same for all hosted controls or this one specific and how can it be solved?
Regards,
Ivan
The WindowsFormsHost supports Transparency. But some WinForms Controls do not.
See the Supported Scenarios in Windows Presentation Foundation and Windows Forms Interoperation article on MSDN. Especially the first row in the "Behaviour" table:
Some Windows Forms controls do not
support transparency. For example, the
TextBox and ComboBox controls will not
be transparent when hosted by WPF.
Related
I want to integrate two existing applications into one. One of those apps is built on Windows Forms and the other on WPF.
Is it possible to achieve this?
WPF supplies the WindowsFormsHost class that allows you to host WinForms controls inside a WPF window; conversely, WinForms supplies ElementHost that allows you to host WPF controls inside a form.
Unfortunately how well things work out is highly dependent on exactly what you are doing, last time I checked there were more than a few rough edges. For more information, definitely start from this MSDN page.
If you want to have "independent" WPF windows and WinForms forms inside the same application, you will have to make both frameworks "share" some code in your UI thread's message loop. For a primer on how to do that, see here.
There are various classes to help you with this.
For hosting Windows Forms controls in a WPF Window, you can use the WindowsFormsHost class. For hosting WPF Controls in a Windows Forms Window, you can use the ElementHost class.
You can look here for mor information on the subject (windows forms section):
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms753178.aspx
I'm new to WPF and I'm wondering is there anyway to have elements from Winforms toolbox in WPF. I mean the Winforms toolbox has a lot of elements and they're not present in WPF toolbox. for example something like PerformanceCounter in Winforms toolbox is not found in WPF toolbox.
thanks in advance
There are some controls that didn't get represented in WPF, but you can use WindowsFormsHost. As the name indicates, it's purpose is to host the Windows Forms elements.
Walkthrough: Hosting a Windows Forms Control in WPF
I would add that things like PerformanceCounter you can use in code, rather than placing it on a form. Other elements which do have a UI purpose can be placed inside a WindowsFormsHost control. I do this with ReportViewer -- it's a Windows Forms control that has no WPF equivalent.
If not, how can I know which controls are used in winforms, which controls are used in WPF?
If you develop a WinForms application, WPF controls are not shown in your toolbox, and vice versa.
If you want to use a WinForms control in a WPF application anyway, there's the WindowsFormsHost WPF control for that.
For hosting a WPF control in a Windows Forms app, you can use the System.Windows.Forms.Integration.ElementHost control.
The toolboxes already filter what controls you can use depending on whether you have created a Win Form or a WPF application project.
My fairly large WinForm application needs a GUI overhaul, but I can't afford to do it all at once. I need to know if I can slowly add WPF into it, and if so, how?
Can I add WPF dialogs?
Can I add WPF 'panels' within a WinForm so that I can embed WPF elements?
EDIT
Can I do the opposite and put WinForm dialogs in my WPF application?
Yes, you can host WPF controls in your WinForms applications:
Walkthrough: Hosting a 3-D WPF Composite Control in Windows Forms
Walkthrough: Hosting a Composite WPF Control in Windows Forms
Yep, I've successfully mixed winforms and WPF. I even managed to add WPF windows to win32 apps, changed this app to a dll and used a WPF app to show win32 windows which show WPF windows.
To host WPF windows in WinForm or win32 apps you will need this line befor you .Show() your WpfWindow:
System.Windows.Forms.Integration.ElementHost.EnableModelessKeyboardInterop(myWpfWindow);
See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa348549.aspx
You can use the ElementHost control found in the System.Windows.Forms.Integration namespace. You will need a reference to the WindowsFormsIntegration assembly (in WindowsFormsIntegration.dll)
This control is an empty container into which you can put WPF controls e.g.
myElementHost.Child = someWpfControl;
You can find it in your toolbox and drag and drop it onto a winform like any other control;
Is it possible to have a project containing both Winforms and WPF?
Say a WinForm project that is transformed step by step(form by form) in a WPF one, will be possible to have a Winform opening on a button, and a WPF one opening on a other button?
Yes. You have to pick one technology to display each physical window and control in your app, but there's no reason why you can't mix and match.
For example:
A WinForms window can show a WPF window.
A WPF window can show a WinForms window.
A WinForms window can contain WPF content (see the ElementHost control).
A WPF window can contain WinForms controls (see the WindowsFormsHost control).
This works great.
One can have WPF windows in Windows Forms and Windows Forms windows in WPF
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms745781.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.integration.windowsformshost.aspx
Adding Winforms to WPF projects can be done smoothly (directly from the "Add new item" menu), but there is not straight option to add a WPF window to a Winforms project. Still, I handled to do it following these steps:
Add a WPF User Control (this option is available on the "Add new
item" menu) and then convert it into a WPF Window. Modify the XAML
changing the UserControl parent tag to Window, and remove the
inheritance from UserControl (all of this is explained in this link).
Add a reference to System.Xaml.dll. See this link.
Add a reference to System.Windows.dll (I found it on my computer on this path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework.NETFramework\v4.5. Be aware it might be different in yours). See this link.
What you might be looking for is the ElementHost control. What it lets you do is take WPF content and host it in a Windows Forms window. More details are here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms745781.aspx
There is also a control that lets you do the reverse: host Windows Forms content from within WPF:
http://nayyeri.net/host-windows-forms-controls-in-wpf
Between the two, you can move the 'dividing line' between WPF and Windows Forms with some degree of flexibility.
There is at one caveat you'll need to keep in mind. Windows Forms works internally in terms of HWND's... a window managed by the legacy Windows window manager (which handles the z-order). WPF doesn't do this... A WPF tree is typically rendered into a single HWND', and it's WPF that manages things like z-order. What this means to you is that z-order doesn't always work the way you expect it to, and there are things you can't do with hosted Windows Forms controls that you can do with traditional WPF elements. (There is actually a way to solve this, but it involves periodically rendering the HWND into a memory bitmap, rendering that bitmap into a WPF surface, and then redirecting events directed to the WPF surface to the underlying HWND. This is powerful, but tricky and difficult to get right.)
I see no objection to do that.(I have in WinForms Application WPF windows)
Many of the examples used MessageBox.Show which is part of the Windows.Forms.
Of course you must rewrite all windows, not only controls.