I'm using WPF and I have a problem with layouting. I have got a docked panel (non WPF, I just hosted my control inside). And when a user wishes to dock this panel on the left or the right of the screen, I need to layout my controls in one way. But when the user wishes dock this panel on top or bottom, I need to layout my controls in another way.
My question is what is the best way to implement dynamic layout of WPF controls, which depends on some conditions?
I understand, that I can use the grid and dynamically change positions of my controls inside the grid. But I am not really happy with this solution. I'm looking for a solution with no code intervention, xaml only. And in case this is impossible, at least involving minimum intervention in the code.
Thanks in advance.
You could use AvalonDock to get a docking system very much like visual studio's.
This would give your users full control on the layout they desire, and it's not too hard to implement.
But if you really want a quick way to do this, I'd recommand Binding the DockPanel.Dock property to a ViewModel value that changes upon user input (along with an IValueConverter if necessary).
For this purposes DataTemplate feature is.
The idea is to provide multiple DataTemplates and then using your custom inplementation of the DataTemplateSelector rturn right DataTemplate based on criteria.
For an example see my post regarding DataTemplates
Data Templating Overview
Use StoryBoard and change the transformation of controls
Related
I'm trying to create a user control, using the expander control and I want to change only the appearance of expander icon.
could someone please tell me how to do.
There is not direct way to do that. You need to write the whole Template for the control.
As mentioned by #Noam, the Codeproject Article is really good to go. But, the problem is, it wont work for different ExpandDirection of Expander. I have modified a bit to make it work on all directions. You can make use of the following if needed.
Expander with animation that support all direction
Also, you can modify the Arrow icon of Expander as you like.
I have a user control that I am using for some purpose and it's movable on the screen. Actually I am creating an application using Leap Motion. SO wherever I move my figure on the screen a big circular cursor moves accordingly. But on some place it gets cut off or I would say it gets hide or overlapped due to some other controls. So I want to know, how can I placed it on the top of the mainwindow view. Is it possible using adorner layer? If yes, So can you please tell me how to do that in WPF?
I found few examples on net but they are creating a rectangle or some thing on adorner layer using drwaingcontext object, however I just need to show my user control on the top.
Please give me some idea
Thanks & Regards,
Vinod
You shouldn't need to use the Adorner layer to simply show a UserControl on top of other controls... of course that depends on exactly what is 'overlapping' or hiding it. If they are just other UI controls, then you can fix your problem in two ways.
The first is to simply declare your UserControl that you want to be on top of the other controls at the bottom of the XAML, eg. define that element last.
The second solution is to use the Panel.ZIndex Attached Property to place that element above all others:
<UserControl Panel.ZIndex="10" />
I have been using WinForms since the first framework introduced and invested a lot of time and effort in it. Now I am attempting to move to WPF and, honestly, it's not so easy.
Now I have a task, I need to implement a simple wizard, each page of which has a aligned to center group of controls. The group contains a set of buttons, four button in a row. Width of the group is constant, height is variable -- it depends on the number of buttons inside.
It's a simple task for WinForms, but I have no idea how to do it using XAML.
I have three questions:
1). Obviously, the buttons inside a group is a WrapPanel which is placed in a Grid's cell. It's simple. But how to calculate height of the WrapPanel not using code behind?
2). Which is recommended way to implement wizard? Data template or some kind of Tab Control? I probably will need to have some transition effects when switching pages.
3). Is it acceptable in WPF world to use binding as a way to repositioning controls?
Thank you in advance!
The WrapPanel will auto-adjust its height based on its contents by default. WPF is a big advancement from WinForms precisely because of the new layout paradigms. No code behind is needed for anything you've mentioned.
As for 2; there are a lot of ways to implement this, depending on how close you adhere to MVVM (if at all); I'd recommend using a styled TabControl at first (you can adjust the style to present visually the steps in the wizard as tabs, without letting the user jump between tabs), as it's easiest. Also, it's possible to bind pretty much everything to the TabControl.
3 is possible, but should be rarely needed. And I mean it.
Now then; a simple example to show you the power of WPF.
You can have in your ViewModel (if you're not familiar with MVVM google it or read any of Josh Smith's articles or book or... wow there's such a wealth of information on it I don't know which to choose) a collection of objects, let's say Step classes, which you can bind to the ItemsSource of the TabControl. The TabControl will automatically create a tab for each of your Step.
Inside your Step class, you can have a collection of items, let's say... um, Collection<Push> (I'm struggling not to use known classes like Action or Button). If the ItemTemplate of the TabControl contains anything that recognizes that collection, as in a ListBox styled internally to use a WrapPanel for its ItemsContainer, you're done: the template will show the list of Pushes in a WrapPanel and that's that.
Now, I probably shouldn't write a full tutorial here anyway, but that should get you started. Read up on DataTemplates, ItemsControl etc. (again, I'm having difficulties picking resources... Dr. WPF has awesome articles on both, but they might be a bit advanced) and you should be good to go. Just remember that there's a good reason why WPF features a lot more fluid layouts than any previous desktop technology, you should become familiar with that.
I'm trying to improve the graph drawing control that comes with Graph#. It's good, but things get out of hand when you start dragging nodes around. This is my first encounter with WPF, so this is probably a newbie question. :)
I have the GraphCanvas control which has nodes and edges on it. They can be dragged around which changes their coordinates, possibly making them negative. I would like to add scrollbars to the control which would allow to see how big the canvas really is.
To this end I'm thinking of putting the GraphCanvas inside a ScrollViewer. Which would be pretty easy and straightforward if not for one problem. I may not resize the GraphCanvas itself when a node is dragged outside the borders or this will mess up dragging bad. That is also the problem with the original control (check it out, it comes with a sample application).
It would be good if I could bind the scrollbar size/location to properties of the GraphCanvas, so that the ScrollViewer would not scroll anything physically, but just set the properties of GraphCanvas. That in turn would perform all actual calculations and scrolling.
How can this be done?
OK, I found it! Three easy steps:
Implement System.Windows.Controls.Primitives.IScrollInfo on your custom control;
Add your custom control to a ScrollViewer;
Set the CanContentScroll property on the ScrollViewer to True.
Voila!
Check out this link straight from MSDN. It talks about composing several controls into a single Composite Control:
WPF: Customizing Controls for Windows Presentation Foundation
Using C# 2.0 what is the best way to implement dynamic form controls?
I need to provide a set of controls per data object, so should i just do it manually and lay them out while increment the top value or is there a better way?
You can use panels with automatic layout such as FlowLayoutPanel and TableLayoutPanel.
Unfortunately there are only 2 panels with automatic layout out of box but you can create custom layout panel.
I would recommend you to read following articles:
How to: Create a Resizable Windows Form for Data Entry
Walkthrough: Creating a Resizable Windows Form for Data Entry
Another option would be using of WPF (Windows Presentation Presentation).
WPF is a perfect match for your task.
WPF controls can be hosted in WinForms apps so you don't have to switch to it completely.
#Sam I know this question was about Windows Forms, but you should definitely start looking at WPF. This sort of scenario is really easy in WPF with DataTemplates and TemplateSelectors.
What do you mean by “dynamic”? A new, fixed set of controls for each data row in the data set? Then use a UserControl that contains your controls.
Or do you mean that, depending on your data layout, you want to provide the user with a customized set of controls, say, one TextBox for each column?
Yeah, I've found manually layout out controls (incrementing their Top property by the height of the control plus a margin as I go) to be reasonably effective.
Another approach is to place your controls in Panels with Dock set to Top, so that each successive panel docks up against the one above. Then you can toggle the visibility of individual panels and the controls underneath will snap up to fill the available space. Be aware that this can be a bit unpredictable: showing a hidden panel that's docked can sometimes change its position relative to other docked controls.
Well that's the way we are doing it right now on a project. but that's only useful for simple cases. I suggest you use some sort of template for more complex cases.
For instance I used Reflection to map a certain type of control to a certain property on my domain objects on an older project.
You could try generating the code from templates using t4 see T4 Templates in Visual Studio for Code Generation Screencast for a simple example. You can apply this to WinForms.
Also DevExperience has a nice ( expensive ) framework, see DevExpress eXpressApp Framework™ .