Im trying to create a chat application and Im trying to utilize the RichTextBox control for the chat log, the textbox for the user to enter the message and the users online board. But WPF wont allow me to have more than 1 RichTextBox. Whenever I copy paste the only richtextbox on the window WPF creates a copy of it but deletes the first RTB . It also wont allow me to drag and drop one. What do I have to tweak to allow myself to drop more controls ?
Any Window can only have one child element. In your case, depending on how you intend to layout your RTBs, you would need some sort of Panel. Here's a good place to start.
Here's a really quick example (stripped down) explaining a bit more:
<Window>
<!-- You could put a RTB here, but that would become your root control, and it can't have any siblings -->
<Grid>
<!-- Use something like this to layout your inner RichTextBoxes -->
<Grid.RowDefinitions>
<RowDefinition Height="9*" /> // using 9/10 of the available vertical space
<RowDefinition Height="1*" /> // using 1/10 of the available vertical space
</Grid.RowDefinitions>
<!-- Here you can put multiple controls -->
<RichTextBox Grid.Row="0"></RichTextBox>
<RichTextBox Grid.Row="1"></RichTextBox>
</Grid>
</Window>
You can place a Grid or any other Panel like StackPanel, DockPanel, etc. in the Window and put 2 RichTextBoxes in it. Window is a ContentControl which means it can hold only 1 control. Grid is a Panel so it can hold as many controls as you want.
You can make Columns and rows in the Grid or use Margin explicitly to position your RichTextBoxes.
Related
I have some experience in making Winform applications, but not in WPF.
My questions is about panels in WPF.
In Winform, say, I have two panels: PanelA and PanelB. I can place PanelB on top of PanelA by setting PanelB to visible and PanelA to hidden. By doing so, all the controls on PanelA are disabled, which means the controls are not visible to users and cannot be selected by hitting TAB.
However, in WPF, I cannot find an equivalent control to achieve the same effect. I have tried Rectangle, but the controls on the underneath Rectangle can still be selected if the users hit TAB.
I want something that can not only visually block the controls(buttons, etc.), but also preventing the users from selecting them by hitting TAB.
I know there is a way to do it by setting the IsEnabled property to false in WPF in order to disable the controls. But is there an easier way? Like the Panel control in Winform?
I don't know if it is easier than setting the IsEnabled property of the entire Panel to false but the second element you add to a Grid in WPF ends up on top of the first one. So if you want to hide and effectively disable a Rectangle, you could add it to a Grid and then add another element to the same Grid, e.g.:
<Grid>
<Rectangle Width="100" Height="100" Fill="Green" />
<!-- This child Grid that contains a Button element will effectively hide the above Rectange -->
<Grid>
<Button Content="On top..." />
</Grid>
</Grid>
I'm trying to figure out how to overlay an image or textbox over an image in WPF. The base image will be hosting a video feed from a Kinect sensor and I want to overlay an image on it. For example the video feed will have a textbox on the feed that will update a counter or an image of a tree on top of the video feed.
Is there a straightforward way of achieving this in the layout? Is it just a matter of changing properties or adding a canvas?
The below picture better illustrates what it is I'm trying to do:
You can use two transparent canvas inside the Grid without any row and column then place your objects in Back and front Canvas accordingly they will overlap
that is:
<Grid>
<VideoControl><!-- I've never tried video --></VideoControl>
<TextBlock Text="My Text" />
</Grid>
Usually you specify <Grid.ColumnDefinitions> and <Grid.RowDefinitions> but since you do not du that here the controls will overlap
HTH
The usual way for me to overlay items in WPF is just to put all of the elements in a Grid. If you do not define any Columns or Rows the elements will overlap.
Example
<Grid>
<Image Source="image on lowest layer" />
<Image Source="overlaying image" />
</Grid>
I'm trying to render some html content with a WebBrowser xaml control. The html content varies in length. The control is placed within a grid with single row at the moment. I would like to place other controls (StackPanels) before and after the web browser and to get vertical scrolling across the entire layout.
Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot">
<Grid.RowDefinitions>
<RowDefinition Height="*"/>
</Grid.RowDefinitions>
<phone:WebBrowser
Grid.Row="0"
x:Name="webBrowser1"
Background="Black"
HorizontalAlignment="Stretch"
VerticalAlignment="Stretch"
IsScriptEnabled="False"
Visibility="Visible">
</phone:WebBrowser>
<ProgressBar Visibility="Visible" x:Name="LoadingProgress" Indeterminate="True"></ProgressBar>
</Grid>
However I can only scroll the current viewport, being forced to apply a fixed height to the webbrowser.
The theoretical structure I'm aiming to is:
scrollviewer
StackPanel
WebBrowser (probably within another stackPanel)
StackPanel
...
Stackanel
and would like to scroll the scrollViewer, not the webbrowser, so the browser would automatically resize based on the content loaded. Any suggestions?
I found a good blog post on MSDN that addresses this issue: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mikeormond/archive/2010/12/16/displaying-html-content-in-windows-phone-7.aspx
The blogger was initially trying to accomplish the same thing as you, placing a browser into a scrollviewer, etc. But found that it didn't work well for larger html pages, they went with a different solution to disable scrolling and zooming in the browser control. Hope this can help:
This worked fine until dealing with longer bodies of content; when the
height of the WebBrowser control was set to more than 1800px the the
application would crash. As it turned out, there’s a much easier way
to achieve the same effect.
Instead of disabling hit testing on the WebBrowser control (and then
embedding it in a ScrollViewer to re-enabled the scrolling
experience), it’s possible to set meta tags in the HTML to declare
that the user should not be able to zoom the content.
or
These meta tags set the width of the viewport to 320px (to avoid
horizontal scrolling) and specify that the user should not be able to
scale the viewport. Add these meta tags to the HTML injected into the
WebBrowser control and the desired behaviour is achieved.
To get the height from the webview, you can use
window.external.notify("rendered_height=document.getElementById('yourId').offsetHeight")
in body.onload and body.onresize
Here is a complete example of an AdaptativeWebview that handle scroll and resize
I'd like to have some sort of semi transparent/translucent effect displayed over the entire page and then display my option buttons on top of it but I just can't figure out how and it's driving me nuts! I've seen it in plenty of wp8 apps so it is doable but I just don't know how!
Once this semi transparent/translucent effect is displayed, I want it to dissapeared if clicked on or if one of my option buttons is clicked, and restore the screen as it was or execute an action accordingly.
I've somehow managed to do it by setting the Background colors using a storyboard but strangely enough, once displayed and my options buttons appear, they look fine but once the storyboard is completed, the button then look disabled as well which just looks wrong!!
What is the proper way to give a "Disabled" effect as if you had a semi transparent dialog box displayed over a window.
Any ideas, suggestions or code would be appreciated.
Thanks.
You may be making this more complicated than it needs to be. Consider the following XAML for example:
<Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot">
<Grid.RowDefinitions>
<RowDefinition Height="*" />
</Grid.RowDefinitions>
<Grid x:Name="ContentRoot">
...
</Grid>
<Grid x:Name="ContentOverlay" Background="#AA000000" Visibility="Collapsed">
...
</Grid>
</Grid>
Both ContentRoot and ContentOverlay will anchor at the top left of the LayoutRoot grid and span the row height. They will stack from furthest to closest in order of declaration, so ContentRoot will be rendered beneath ContentOverlay. Simply manipulate the Visibility of ContentOverlay based on user input.
Alternatively, you can set the Opacity for ContentOverlay to 0 along with collapsed visibility (required so it doesn't intercept hits to the ContentRoot child controls below) and fade it in and out using storyboarding in Blend. That probably looks like a slightly cleaner transition to a user, even if it's only 0.3 seconds long or so.
Use Blend to specify VisualStates (View | States. Then 'states' tab.) You can switch between states in code behind using VisualStateManager.GoToState. One state would be normal, the other all controls disabled.
Mike
When debugging my WPF programs I have noticed that when the window is the set size, the contols look just fine. But when the window is maximized, the content is positioned at the same place as if window has not resized. I want it so that the content and window resize proportionately. How can I do this? Sorry if it is a noobish question, but I'm kinda new in the WPF era.
The XAML code is not completely ready yet but here is some of elements:
<DockPanel>
<StackPanel DockPanel.Dock="Left">
...
</StackPanel>
<TabControl DockPanel.Dock="Right">
...
</TabControl>
<ListView>
...
</ListView>
</DockPanel>
Usually, this is because dimension values are set statically, rather than dynamically. Here's the static approach:
<RowDefinition x:Name="NavigatorRow" Height="120"/>
<RowDefinition x:Name="TaskPanelRow" Height="80"/>
Both rows will have fixed heights, and they won't resize with the window.
Here is the dynamic approach:
<RowDefinition x:Name="NavigatorRow" Height="1*"/>
<RowDefinition x:Name="TaskPanelRow" Height="80"/>
The bottom row still has a fixed height of 80, but the top row will expand to fill whatever space is available. In other words, the rows will resize with the window. Columns work the same way.
If I had three rows, I could do this:
<RowDefinition x:Name="NavigatorRow" Height="1*"/>
<RowDefinition x:Name="CalendarRow" Height="2*"/>
<RowDefinition x:Name="TaskPanelRow" Height="80"/>
The Navigator Row and the Calendar Row will share the available space, with the Calendar Row taking twice the height of the Navigator Row. You get the idea.
So, it's not the container you use, but how you size that container. The one exception, as noted above, is the StackPanel, which does not scale. Use a Grid instead, since it does scale.
Usually this is because the content is hosted in a container which has an explicitly set width and height - like Grid for example.
Post your Xaml or that answer is the best you will get!
Avoid using StackPanels they don't resize dynamically properly.
Ideally you should use a grid and specify percentages if you want things to resize proportionately.
Not sure why everyone is saying stackpanels don't resize dynamically. They handle resizing just like grids do. Just make sure you set your HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" (and/or VerticalAlignment) and the content will expand to fill the stackpanel size. I'm currently using a UI that consists of many nested stackpanels, horizontal and vertical resizing the window expands/contracts all the controls equally inside the window.
Well, you have to have some sort of container for your controls, right? If you're using Canvas and just position your controls absolutely inside there you're pretty much out of luck; this isn't very well for scaling interfaces.
However, there are various container controls that will layout whatever you put in them in certain ways. And if used properly, they scale with a resizing window, too. The Grid is pretty flexible, but StackPanel and DockPanel are very handy at times, too.
You can nest them, if you need.
Use WPF grid with the Widht and Height properties setupped with the "Number*" notion.
For example Width="0.6*", wich is not absolute height but proportional relation to the container. Generaly , if you want resizable content, avoid the fixed size properties as much as you can.
<Grid.RowDefinitions>
<RowDefinition Height="10*"></RowDefinition>
<RowDefinition Height="*" ></RowDefinition>
</Grid.RowDefinitions>
Good Luck.