I have a storyboard animation in a popup and I want this to be on every page in the application. How can I do this without copy pasting the animation into every XAML and all the code-behind logic to control the animation. I also have buttons that should be on every page as well in certain positions. Is there a better way to do this than duplicating code? I'm already inheriting from PhoneApplicationPage but that only handles the code-behind stuff and no the XAML layout.
You can create UserControl for your animation rather than duplicating code, call this User Control in other user controls or pages.
To add User Control right click your project Add then New Item then Silverlight User Control, name your control accordingly for example "AnimationUserControl" finally click Add. Do your animation work in this new User Control to call this new User Control in other Controls you have to add reference of you project into User Control where u are calling AnimationUserControl for example in MainPage.xaml like this:
<UserControl x:Class="Com.Softechww.Controls.Silverlight.Scheduler.Scheduler"
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
xmlns:local="clr-namespace:ProjectNameSpace" Width="800" Height="450" >
add new line with "xmlns:local" which value is referring you projects root, project namespace can be found by right clicking project file in Visual Studio under Silverlight then Default namespace.
now simply call it below in User Control like this:
<Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot">
<local:AnimationUserControl/>
</Grid>
It should work.
Related
Overview
Hey everyone, I'm working on a project that is a C# WPF desktop app to create and edit a complex system. Simply think of it as and editor that can put together a full description of a car with all it's subcomponents.
I want each different component of the car to have a separate editor window. Like select the painting on the car and tada a sidewindow appears where you can fully customize the car's paint. Then when you click on the engine, that same sidewindow get's replaced by a new editor about the car's engine.
Question
How can I make that editor window that I already created with xaml and codebehind to appear as a part of the MainWindow, embedded as a sidebar?
If possible, I would avoid any 3rd party libraries, but if there is no other 'clean' way of doing it then I'm open to suggestions in that area as well.
I have fully functional windows that I created with the designer, wrote all the code for it to work, now I just have to find a way to embed those into the MainWindow on a press of a button.
Thanks for any answers
If you want something to "part of the MainWindow", you should not create another window because a Window cannot be a child of another element.
What you probably want to do is to move the XAML markup and code-behind from your current subwindow into a UserControl. You can then put the UserControl(s) into an appropriate Panel in your MainWindow.
For example, if you want UserControl to appear a sidebar in the window, you could use a DockPanel to dock it to the right:
<DockPanel>
<Border DockPanel.Dock="Right" Background="Yellow">
<local:SidebarUserControl Margin="10" />
</Border>
<TextBlock>main content...</TextBlock>
</DockPanel>
I created a user control in a project that consists of just a MainWindow.xaml and the code behind. I added the .dll to the toolbox of VS, and dropped it onto a window in a new project. This created the following:
<Window
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008"
xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"
xmlns:local="clr-namespace:WpfApplication5"
xmlns:ThinkGeoClean="clr-namespace:ThinkGeoClean;assembly=ThinkGeoClean" x:Class="WpfApplication5.MainWindow"
mc:Ignorable="d"
Title="MainWindow" >
<Grid>
<ThinkGeoClean:ListBoxCustom x:Name="listBoxCustom" />
</Grid>
</Window>
The ThinkGeoClean is the name of the .dll I added which is the usercontrol. ListBoxCustom is just a public class in the control, but is NOT what I want to show. I want to show the main window of the usercontrol (not a window), but it doesn't show as an option after typing <ThinkGeoClean:. The only thing that shows up is ListBoxCustom. If I go ahead and type <ThinkGeoClean.MainWindow>, it gives a XamlParseException error on that line.
Now, if I go into the code-behind and do:
ThinkGeoClean.MainWindow newWin = new ThinkGeoClean.MainWindow();
newWin.Show();
It will pop up the usercontrol in a new window and it works fine.
Here's the beginning of usercontrol code behind:
namespace ThinkGeoClean
{
/// <summary>
/// Interaction logic for MainWindow.xaml
/// </summary>
public partial class MainWindow : Window, INotifyPropertyChanged
{
And the xaml for it is just a single grid containing some buttons and a map control.
Edit: In addition to the answer below, my user control was originally just a normal WPF project. I thought changing the output type to a class library would change it into a user control automatically, but I actually had to go into the xaml and change the the into .
This XAML:
<Grid>
<ThinkGeoClean:ListBoxCustom x:Name="listBoxCustom" />
</Grid>
...is not equivalent to creating an instance of a window and call the Show() method on it programmatically.
Instead the XAML processor will try to add the window to the Children collection of the Grid and this is not possible since a window cannot be child of another control. That's why you get an exception.
Also, a UserControl must be hosted in a window or page. It is not a top-level control that you can display without any parent host.
I have a treeview at the left side of the screen, and when I click on any of the TreeViewItem, I want the right side of the screen to change accordingly.
For example, clicking on 'Project' would display on the right half of the screen, a label for project name along with the project name in a text box, and a similar label-textbox pair for some other fields. Clicking on a sub-option of 'Project' such as 'Task 1' should change the right half of the screen such that instead of labels and textboxes for project name and details, it should now be for task name/details. Atm, I only care about label-textbox pairs but in the future I'll need some more sophisticated options, maybe buttons and tables.
What I thought of was to have a grid premade for each option, when I clicked on 'Project' there would be a grid which displays all the info for a Project. And when I then clicked on 'Task 1', the Project grid should be hidden and the Task grid should be displayed with the fields filled out.
Is this possible? What should I be using to create templates that I can then choose from?
Firoz already mentioned the important bit. A rough guess is that you're not using MVVM pattern, so to minimize the adaption effort, you could add a Content Control to your window and set the content of this control whenever a selection is made. You can put any User Control in there.
Using MVVM would mean you bind that Content Control to a property on your ViewModel (of type UIElement or UserControl) and set an instance whenever a bound selected values changes. Speaking of selected Value, I think the default TreeView is not really Binding-friendly, so you might end up with behaviours that do the binding for you.
What you are asking to do is quite easy and possible, but I don't think you are thinking quite big enough.
As your project grows and the number of different things that you want to show expands, then you are going to need to show and hide more and more controls. This is quite quickly going to get unmanageable. Instead think about some other controls deal with this, in some ways you are doing something very like a tabbed dialog, just with a hierarchical set of tabs.
A tabbed dialog has a panel and a set of tabs, when you click on each tab, the content of the panel changes. In fact you can create UserControls one for each specialised set of UI that you want to display, e.g. you could have a ProjectControl that displays all of your project textboxes, labels, buttons etc.
In addition WPF has this neat feature called DataTemplates, these define how a type of data should look when it is displayed. So if you where to have a
public class MyProject
{
public string Name {get;set;}
}
Then you could define
<DataTemplate DataType="{x:Type MyProject}>
<TextBox Text="{Binding Name}"/>
</DataTemplate>
And WPF will automatically convert the data into to its visual form if you set it as the content of the tab panel.
However this type of displaying content in a panel is not the only WPF control that does this. There is also something called a NavigationFrame, which also can be used wrapped into a Window as a NavigationWindow. This control provides you ways to navigate to the next Page to display. Pages can be just like the UserControls in a tabbed dialog, but can also be URIs, enabling you to link in content from the web if you wish. In addition you can call NavigateTo from other controls enabling you build much more usable interfaces.
I worked through the process of building a full windows control panel style interface in
http://alski.net/post/2012/01/11/WPF-Wizards.aspx
and http://alski.net/post/2012/01/13/WPF-Wizards-part-2-Glass.aspx
I've added later VS2012 style glows in
http://alski.net/post/2013/09/14/WPF-Re-creating-VS2012Office-2013-window-glow.aspx
And then released the entire source code as open source at
http://winchrome.codeplex.com/
This comes with support for embedding Navigation panels with
<WinChrome:SearchableNavigationWindow
x:Class="WinChrome.Win7Demo.MainWindow"
...
xmlns:WinChrome="clr-namespace:WinChrome;assembly=WinChrome"
Style="{StaticResource Win7NavigationWindow}">
<WinChrome:SearchableNavigationWindow.Navigation>
<view:Navigation x:Name="navigationTree"/>
</WinChrome:SearchableNavigationWindow.Navigation>
(Full source code)
Where the navigation window is embedded as, but can also be a TreeView.
<UserControl x:Class="WinChrome.View.Navigation" ...>
<ScrollViewer HorizontalScrollBarVisibility="Disabled" Padding="12,0"
VerticalScrollBarVisibility="Auto" >
<StackPanel>
<Button
Margin="0,12,0,0" Style="{StaticResource LinkNavigatorButtonStyle}"
Content="Home"
Command="{Binding
RelativeSource={RelativeSource FindAncestor, AncestorType={x:Type Win7Demo:MainWindow}, AncestorLevel=1},
Path=GoHomeCommand}" />
</StackPanel>
</ScrollViewer>
(Full source code)
I'm new in WPF and C#. I know a lot of VB.NET and I'm used to the way when I call a form object like textboxes, etc. I'm calling it from another form. Now, I'm using WPF, I'm confused. Because I have a Main Window. And I want to add and item to a listbox in the Main Window from a Class. In VB.Net , its just like this.
IN FORM2
Form1.Textbox.Text = "";
Wherein I can't do it in WPF. Can someone please Help me. Thanks!
WPF windows defined in XAML have their controls publicly accessible from other classes and forms, unless you specifically mark them with the x:FieldModifier attribute as private.
Therefore, if you make an instance of your main window accessible in another class, be it a Window or anything else, you'll be able to populate controls from within this second class.
A particular scenario is when you want to update the contents of a control in your main window from a child window that you have opened on top of it. Is such a case, you may set the child window's Owner property to the current, main window, in order to access it while the child is visible. For instance, let's say you have defined these two windows:
// MainWindow
<Window x:Class="TestApplication.MainWindow"
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
Title="MainWindow" Height="350" Width="525">
<Grid>
<ListBox Name="mainListBox" Height="250" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" VerticalAlignment="Top"/>
<Button Content="Open Another Window" HorizontalAlignment="Center" VerticalAlignment="Bottom" Margin="20" Click="OpenAnotherWindow_Click"/>
</Grid>
</Window>
and
// AnotherWindow
<Window x:Class="TestApplication.AnotherWindow"
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
Title="AnotherWindow" Height="300" Width="300">
<Grid>
<Button Content="Add New Item to Main Window" HorizontalAlignment="Center" VerticalAlignment="Center" Click="AddNewItem_Click"/>
</Grid>
</Window>
each in its own XAML file.
In MainWindow's code behind, inside the button click handler, you show an instance of AnotherWindow as a dialog and set its Owner property to MainWindow's instance:
private void OpenAnotherWindow_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
AnotherWindow anotherWindow = new AnotherWindow();
anotherWindow.Owner = this;
anotherWindow.ShowDialog();
}
Now, you can access the MainWindow's instance from AnotherWindow's Owner property, in order to add a new item to the ListBox control defined on it, in the button click handler in AnotherWindow's code behind:
private void AddNewItem_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
MainWindow mainWindow = Owner as MainWindow;
mainWindow.mainListBox.Items.Add(new Random().Next(1000).ToString());
}
It simply adds a new random number to the ListBox, in order to show how the code accesses and modifies the control's data in MainWindow.
Pure WPF solution, but also may be easiest in your case, is using a Data Binding in WPF.
Every form's control is binded to some data on ModelView (pure MVVM approach) or to data (more or less like yuo can do it in WindowsForms). So the "only" thing you have to do is to read/write data binded to controls on UI of that form.
For example, you have TextBox on Windows and want to read a data from it.
This TextBox is binded to some string property of the class that is responsible for holding the data for the controls on that form (just an example, in real world could be 1000 other solutions, based on developer decisions). So what you need, is not to say: "window give textbox" and after read TextBox's content, but simply read binded string property.
Sure it's very simply description of a stuff. But just to give you a hint. Follow databinding link provided above to learn more about this stuff. Do not afraid of a lot of stuff there, it's after all is not a complicated idea and also pretty intuitive. To make that stuff to work in simply case you will not need to make huge efforts by me. The stuff becomes really complex when you end up into real world applications.
This will get all active windows:
foreach (Window item in Application.Current.Windows)
{
}
I am trying to allow several classes to inherit a more general Silverlight user control to avoid redundancy in my code. The classes inherit the extended control, which then inherits the User Control class. The issue I have been running into is that the ExtendedControlExtension.g.cs file regenerates every time I compile, with the incorrect inheritance (it inherits User Control not my Extended Control).
Note that I have been inheriting the Extended Control in the .cs and g.cs files, but continuing to use the User Control tag in the .aspx file as this causes the error
Error 29 The tag 'ExtendedControl' does not exist in XML namespace 'http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation'.
Is there a way to fix this?
Thanks!
You cannot change the .g.cs file, in fact is says so right in the file. Also, it's unfortunate to use the term "custom control" as this means something specific and not what you are trying to do. But, the good news is that what you are trying to do is possible.
Derive from UserControl:
public class FancyUserControl : UserControl
{
// Your added common functionality.
}
and then add a new UserControl to your project using the normal mechanism, let's say UserControl1. Then edit the UserControl.xaml files as follows:
<local:FancyUserControl x:Class="SilverlightApplication1.UserControl1"
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008"
xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"
xmlns:local="clr-namespace:SilverlightApplication1"
mc:Ignorable="d"
d:DesignHeight="300" d:DesignWidth="400">
<Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White">
</Grid>
</local:FancyUserControl>
paying special attention to the three lines with local in them, adjusting to your application. Then edit the UserControl1.xaml.cs file as follows:
public partial class UserControl1 : FancyUserControl
{
public UserControl1()
{
InitializeComponent();
}
}
and Visual Studio won't be quite happy yet but finally rebuild your project and all will be well.
The class UserControl1 is now derived from FancyUserControl instead of UserControl and you can begin adding your common functionality. To add more controls you will need to manually edit the XAML and code-behind once after initially adding each new control to the project.