This is a getting started question about how to create a reusable wpf slideshow control:
that displays a sequence of any visualizable elements e.g. a series of Image controls or a series of UserControls (should I target ContentControl, or is there a broader type that encompasses more visualizables/controls?)
the control should be able to accept an IList of some kind, which would be the elements/slides to present
the control should expose an Interval property that determines the duration of each slide, but i dont even know the basics of how to get started with that in terms of offering that property to be configured in xaml?
and what should the container be, if any, for the individual slides/controls that are passed in?
To start with, you should probably create a UserControl which contains an Image control, and perhaps Next/Previous Buttons, and anything else you may need. These would all be laid out as normal using a variety of panels, you could probably style most of it with just a Grid.
After that, your UserControl will implement the ImageSource (your IList, or IEnumerable of images), and your interval as dependency properties. These are then settable in XAML.
You would then write the logic which loads the next image and sets it as the Image's Source property, this could happen in the change event for the ImageSource property. You can then get as advanced as you wish with Image preloading/caching etc.
I've just delved into WPF myself for a "Slideshow" like project where I'm showing customer order numbers on screen for a period of time before showing the next, and using Effect/Transitions/Storyboards to move to the next frame. I found a good article on CodeProject
I used a Grid with 2 rows:
Contains my "Changing area".
Contains static information (logo, controls etc).
Rememeber to set "cliptobounds = true" on your changing area if you use any sort of transforms on it. (I know you said you aren't using transitions initially, but once people see it, they'll be asking).
Dependency properties are also easily built in C# if you just type propdp and hit tab.
Related
In my app, there is a feature to customize it's own Controls (like Textbox, Labels, Textblocks, Buttons, etc), this feature interface is located inside a TabItem. Lets say i want to modify Button A, which is located in ANOTHER container. On the feature interface, i set it's Foreground property to White, at this moment i don't know whether the Button looks better or not, so i have to go to the container which contains that Button.
What am i trying to do is, i want to create a "preview" Control (which is the same type as the actual target) inside the feature interface. I want any changes on this "preview" control are reflected to the actual target Control. With this, i won't need to navigate to where the target Control located.
When i used the title ("How do you bind 2 controls)" with google, all results actually gives me "how to bind SINGLE property of a control to another control's property". What i want is how do you bind/link 2 Controls literally, i mean, i want to bind ALL properties of Control A to ALL properties of Control B.
Binding them one by one is one (tiring) way. Is there another way to achieve this?
I would prefer code-behind method.
There is no "fast" way to do this, you will have to bind one by one according to your buisness logic.
Also a binding is not cheap regarding performance so binding each and every property of a control even those you dont explicitly need, is a warning sign.
I've put together a scheduling application similar in style to that found in outlook, however it can show the schedules of multiple people. I have written a user control, basically a Border with gradient filled background & TextBlock. One of these controls are added to a Canvas at a set location for every appointment. The trouble is, I will have multiple users, with multiple appointments and may need to display 1000 or so appointments at a time. Initially, it takes an absolute age to instantiate all of these objects, however, I can live with this.
Unfortunately, the big problem arises when I try to scroll through the appointments. I have a couple of buttons to scroll left and right and upon clicking these, the UserControls' Left position are moved left or right a certain number of pixels - it can take several seconds between clicking a button and repainting(I also tried with labels just to test, but it was the same).
I guess the real question here is how to implement an interface, showing hundreds of controls with adequate performance and if this isn't achievable, how would I approach such an UI.
One possible option is a TextBlock CustomControl. You can get the exact same style as you have in your usercontrol but with a somewhat faster loading time.
Without a good, minimal, complete code example that reliably reproduces the problem, it will be difficult if not impossible to completely understand the performance problem you are having, never mind provide a solution.
That said, from your description it sounds like you are really looking to present the user with some type of ItemsControl, such as ListBox or ListView (a specialization of ListBox). In an ItemsControl, you can specify an ItemTemplate that defines how each item in the list will appear; this is analogous to the UserControl you apparently are using now.
I believe it's likely it will work fine just with that change alone. I.e. define your per-item visual as a DataTemplate instead of a UserControl, and set the ItemTemplate property of e.g. your ListBox to that template, then just bind your collection of appointment objects to the ListBox.ItemsSource property.
Note that the ListBox class already defaults to using VirtualizingStackPanel in its ItemsPanel template. So you should have no performance problems at all with this approach if you use ListBox.
If you want to use a different ItemsControl or create a custom one, you may or may not find that you need to use a virtualizing panel object explicitly (such as the VirtualizingStackPanel that ListBox uses). With just 1000 items in the list, even a non-virtualized panel may be fine, but if not then even when not using ListBox, you can always specify it explicitly.
My program will prompt the user for a number, i.e. 25. The program will then start the "main form" with 25 controls (textbox). The 25 (or whatever number) of textboxes (or whatever control) will need to be formatted evenly. I will also need to be able to retrieve the text (or another property if I use another control) in order, from left to right and up to down. What is the best method of approaching this?
Using WPF MVVM. In a .XAML file, create a DataTemplate with the DataType of a ViewModel that will provide the binding for your TextBoxs, lets call this the TextboxViewModel. Then using a ItemsControl element with an ItemsSource of TextboxViewModel. You'll be able to instantiate as many TextBoxs as you want and be able to get the result by browsing through your list of TextboxViewModel.
Supposing you are using Windows Forms here.
Dynamically create the X controls and add them to the Controls collection of your form. To ease the access to them you can store their reference in a List and set some event handlers too, depending on your needs. You just need to calculate their positions while you add them.
If WinForms, this is exactly what the FlowLayoutPanel is for. Just add the controls to it and they will arrange themselves automatically, wrapping down to the next row as needed. As Mihai already suggested, you could also keep reference to those controls in a List.
Another option would be to use a TableLayoutPanel. It's a little more difficult to learn and use, but is much more flexible and powerful.
I have a C# CLI program that scans for missing Windows updates and writes them to command line or serializes them to XML depending on the flag passed in. I'm trying to build a WPF component to this but am unsure of a few things. Specifically I'd like to write all missing updates to a grid in the center of my WPF main window. The appearance would be something like this (with gridlines between the fields):
NAME SEVERITY DETECTED
Security Update for Windows 7 (KB1234567) Important 3/9/2014
Security Update for Windows 7 (KB7654321) Critical 3/9/2014
My specific questions:
What type of control would I need to add to the window to house this data?
How do I send the data (detected missing update names and properties) to the grid for display?
How can I set the control so that it is collapsed (or invisible) when no missing updates are detected?
Will I need to add a scrollbar to the grid or will one display automatically?
Apologies for the simple questions. I'm really just looking for some examples to get started, and I haven't been able to find anything thus far that meets my needs.
What type of control would I need to add to the window to house this
data?
DataGrid control is what you are looking for.
How do I send the data (detected missing update names and properties)
to the grid for display?
Bind ItemsSourceof DataGrid to ObservableCollection<T> where T will be class containing data with properties Name, Severity and Detected.
How can I set the control so that it is collapsed (or invisible) when
no missing updates are detected?
Add a DataTrigger to check if ItemsSource collection contains no data, collapse the visibility.
Will I need to add a scrollbar to the grid or will one display
automatically?
DataGrid internally use ScrollViewer. No need to add explicitly.
Refer to the dataGrid samples here and here.
As an alternative DataGrid can offer ListView control, it will be little "easier" than the DataGrid, he also supports the ability to sort columns. For him also need to bind a ItemsSource collection to display:
The ListView control provides the infrastructure to display a set of data items in different layouts or views. For example, a user may want to display data items in a table and also to sort its columns.
Example in MSDN.
Little add some notes to the wonderful answer of #RohitVats, all that has been said about DataGrid also applies to ListView:
How can I set the control so that it is collapsed (or invisible) when no missing updates are detected?
In this situation, I advise you to adhere to the principle of MVVM. Use Binding and Commands to create an independent application. You want to create property (for example IsEnabled) in Model / ViewModel and use bindings to set them in the View, in order to avoid apply directly to the Control. WinForms style app or "regular" applications creates a strong connection between logic and UI, which subsequently impedes further change and application maintenance.
I am somewhat new to WPF and hopefully I'm not asking for the world here but I'm looking for advice/direction on how to go about implementing something like the following.
I'd like to have my MainWindow contain N buttons. Each Button performs the same action on a different set of data (i.e. print picture 1, print picture 2, ... , print picture N). I'd like my window to automatically layout the buttons as described below:
Note how the number of buttons increases, the layout automatically adjusts in a pleasing manner. Up to 6, and then the it provides a horizontal scroll to shuffle through the buttons.
I feel like the <Grid> control might be the way to provide this but I'm lost in how to get the automatic layout tweaks short of a lot of brute fore.
Tangentially, I see the power in Data Binding in WPF and ideally the button's info (it's display text, graphic, etc.) would be automatically binded to an observable collection so that as I insert buttons into the collection, the UI automatically updates. Conversely when each button is clicked, I'd like to have a generic handler know button 5 maps to the 5th element in my collection which has all this additional info (i.e. the file name of the picture to print).
That all sounds well and good but again I'm lost a bit in the implementation.
As Allonym said, the most customizable way would be to create a new custom Panel for this.
IMHO, it may also be possible to achieve this using a UniformGrid, and tweaking it a bit with bindings and converters. That is for the layouting.
About your second question, I think using an ItemsControl is the best way. You could pass it your new Panel (or UniformGrid) as its ItemsPanel. Also, you could then create a DataTemplate with a button inside, bind its Command property to a single command (= generic Handler), with as parameter the DataContext of the DataTemplate (= the current item of the list). This part is easier than the layouting.
Does is help?
Antoine
I think you'd have to create a custom Panel class, overriding MeasureOverride and ArrangeOverride to achieve your desired layout. Check out this (very brief) tutorial.