WPF recipes in C# 2008 : a problem-solution approach

740 Pages·4.981 MB·English

by  Sam Noble, Sam Bourton, Allen Jones

WPF Recipes in C# 2008
A Problem-Solution Approach
■ ■ ■
Sam Noble, Sam Bourton, and
Allen Jones
WPF Recipes in C# 2008: A Problem-Solution Approach
Copyright © 2008 by Sam Noble, Sam Bourton, and Allen Jones
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval
system, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher.
ISBN-13 (pbk): 978-1-4302-1084-9
ISBN-13 (electronic): 978-1-4302-1083-2
Printed and bound in the United States of America 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Trademarked names may appear in this book. Rather than use a trademark symbol with every occurrence
of a trademarked name, we use the names only in an editorial fashion and to the benefit of the trademark
owner, with no intention of infringement of the trademark.
Lead Editor: Ewan Buckingham
Technical Reviewer: Todd Meister
Editorial Board: Clay Andres, Steve Anglin, Ewan Buckingham, Tony Campbell, Gary Cornell,
Jonathan Gennick, Matthew Moodie, Joseph Ottinger, Jeffrey Pepper, Frank Pohlmann,
Ben Renow-Clarke, Dominic Shakeshaft, Matt Wade, Tom Welsh
Senior Project Manager: Sofia Marchant
Copy Editor: Kim Wimpsett
Associate Production Director: Kari Brooks-Copony
Senior Production Editor: Laura Cheu
Compositor: Susan Glinert Stevens and Octal Publishing, Inc.
Proofreader: April Eddy and Kim Burton
Indexer: Broccoli Information Management
Cover Designer: Kurt Krames
Manufacturing Director: Tom Debolski
Distributed to the book trade worldwide by Springer-Verlag New York, Inc., 233 Spring Street, 6th Floor,
New York, NY 10013. Phone 1-800-SPRINGER, fax [phone], e-mail [email protected], or
visit http://www.springeronline.com.
For information on translations, please contact Apress directly at 2855 Telegraph Avenue, Suite 600,
Berkeley, CA 94705. Phone [phone], fax [phone], e-mail [email protected], or visit http://
www.apress.com.
Apress and friends of ED books may be purchased in bulk for academic, corporate, or promotional use.
eBook versions and licenses are also available for most titles. For more information, reference our Special
Bulk Sales–eBook Licensing web page at http://www.apress.com/info/bulksales.
The information in this book is distributed on an “as is” basis, without warranty. Although every precaution
has been taken in the preparation of this work, neither the author(s) nor Apress shall have any liability to
any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly
by the information contained in this work.
The source code for this book is available to readers at http://www.apress.com.
Contents
About the Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv
About the TechnicalReviewer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii
Acknowledgments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xix
■CHAPTER 1 Building and Debugging WPF Applications. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1-1. Create a Standard WPF Application. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1-2. Handle an Unhandled Exception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1-3. Create and Use a Dependency Property. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1-4. Create a Read-Only Dependency Property. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1-5. Override a Dependency Property’s Metadata. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1-6. Add a PropertyChangedValueCallback to Any
Dependency Property. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
1-7. Add Validation to a Dependency Property. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
1-8. Create and Use an Attached Property. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
1-9. Create a Dependency Property with Property Value Inheritance . . . 28
1-10. Merge Two Resource Dictionaries. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
1-11. Define Application-wide Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
1-12. Reference a ResourceDictionary in a Different Assembly . . . . . . . 36
1-13. Share Properties Throughout an Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
1-14. Create a Single-Instance Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
1-15. Manage Multiple Windows in an Application. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
1-16. Debug Data Bindings Using an IValueConverter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
1-17. Debug Bindings Using Attached Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
■CHAPTER 2 Working with Windows, Forms, and
Layout Management. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
2-1. Automatically Size the Main Application Window
to Accommodate Its Content. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
2-2. Arrange UI Elements in a Horizontal or Vertical Stack. . . . . . . . . . . . 59
2-3. Arrange UI Elements into Automatically Wrapping
Rows or Columns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
2-4. Dock UI Elements to the Edges of a Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
vii
viii ■CONTENTS
2-5. Arrange UI Elements in a Grid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
2-6. Position UI Elements Using Exact Coordinates. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
2-7. Display Content in a Multitabbed User Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
2-8. Display Content in a Scrollable User Interface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
2-9. Display Content in Resizable Split Panel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
2-10. Display Content in an Expander. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
2-11. Place a Group Box Around a Set of UI Elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
2-12. Display a Message Box. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
2-13. Display a Pop-up Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
2-14. Display a Border . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
2-15. Display a Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
2-16. Display a Toolbar. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
2-17. Display a Status Bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
2-18. Control the Size of UI Elements in a Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
2-19. Define the Tab Order of UI Elements in a Form. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
■CHAPTER 3 Using Standard Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
3-1. Display Control Content Surrounded
by Braces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
3-2. Display Simple Text. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
3-3. Display a Static Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
3-4. Get Simple Text Input from a User. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
3-5. Get Rich Text Input from a User. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
3-6. Load or Save the Content of a RichTextBox. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
3-7. Display a Password Entry Box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
3-8. Spell Check a TextBox or RichTextBox Control in Real Time . . . . . 120
3-9. Handle a Button Click . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
3-10. Generate Click Events Repeatedly While a Button Is Clicked. . . . 124
3-11. Set a Default Button . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
3-12. Provide Quick Keyboard Access to Text Boxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
3-13. Provide Quick Keyboard Access to Buttons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
3-14. Get User Input from a Slider. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
3-15. Display a Context Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
3-16. Display a Tool Tip on a Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
3-17. Display a Tool Tip on a Disabled Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
3-18. Control the Display Duration and Position of a Tool Tip . . . . . . . . 140
3-19. View and Select Items from a Set of Radio Buttons . . . . . . . . . . . 142
3-20. View and Select Items from a Set of Check Boxes . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
3-21. View and Select Items Using a Tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
3-22. View and Select Items Using a List. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
■CONTENTS ix
3-23. Dynamically Add Items to a List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
3-24. View and Select Items Using a Combo Box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
3-25. Display a Control Rotated. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
■CHAPTER 4 Creating User and Custom Controls. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
4-1. Create a User Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
4-2. Set the Content Property of a User Control. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
4-3. Add Properties to a User Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
4-4. Add Events to a User Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
4-5. Support Application Commands in a User Control. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
4-6. Add Custom Commands to a User Control. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
4-7. Set Design Mode Behavior in a User Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
4-8. Create a Lookless Custom Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
4-9. Specify the Parts Required by a Custom Control. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
4-10. Support UI Automation in a Custom Control. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
4-11. Create a Custom-Drawn Element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
4-12. Create a Numeric TextBox Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
4-13. Create a Scrollable Canvas Control. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
4-14. Create a Zoomable Canvas Control. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
4-15. Create a Drag Canvas Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
■CHAPTER 5 Data Binding. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
5-1. Bind to a Property of a UI Element. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
5-2. Create a Two-Way Binding. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
5-3. Bind a Property of an Element to Itself . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
5-4. Bind to CLR Objects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
5-5. Bind to an Existing Object Instance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
5-6. Bind to XML Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
5-7. Bind to a Method. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
5-8. Bind to a Command. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
5-9. Bind to the Values of an Enumeration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
5-10. Specify a Default Value for a Binding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
5-11. Use Data Templates to Display Bound Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
5-12. Use Value Converters to Convert Bound Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
5-13. Use Data Triggers to Change the Appearance of Bound Data . . . 274
5-14. Select a DataTemplate Based on Properties of the Data Object . 278
5-15. Specify Validation Rules for a Binding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
5-16. Bind to IDataErrorInfo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
5-17. Bind to a Collection with the Master-Detail Pattern . . . . . . . . . . . 295
x ■CONTENTS
5-18. Sort Data in a Collection. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
5-19. Apply Custom Sorting Logic to a Collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
5-20. Filter Data in a Collection. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
5-21. Group Data in a Collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
5-22. Apply Custom Grouping to a Collection. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
5-23. Bind to Application Settings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
5-24. Bind to Application Resource Strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
■CHAPTER 6 Working with Styles, Templates, Skins, and Themes . . . 325
6-1. Create a Named Style. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
6-2. Create a Typed Style. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327
6-3. Override Style Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
6-4. Inherit from a Common Base Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
6-5. Change a Control’s Appearance on MouseOver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
6-6. Apply Multiple Triggers to the SameElement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335
6-7. Evaluate Multiple Properties for the SameTrigger . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336
6-8. Programmatically Extract an Element’sStyle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338
6-9. Set a Style Programmatically. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341
6-10. Ignore an Implicit Style. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343
6-11. Change the Appearance of Alternate Itemsin a List. . . . . . . . . . . 345
6-12. Change the Appearance of a List Item WhenIt’s Selected. . . . . . 347
6-13. Create a Control Template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349
6-14. Put a Control Template into a Style. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351
6-15. Create a Control Template That Can Be Customized
by Properties. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
6-16. Specify Named Parts of a Control Template. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354
6-17. Find ControlTemplate-Generated Elements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356
6-18. Create a Custom ToolTip Style. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358
6-19. Dynamically Change the Skin of an Application. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361
6-20. Create Styles That Adapt to the Current OSTheme . . . . . . . . . . . 365
■CHAPTER 7 Working with Text, Documents, and Printing. . . . . . . . . . . . 371
7-1. Programmatically Insert Text into a RichTextBox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372
7-2. Apply Syntax Highlighting in a Text Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
7-3. Print a WPF Visual. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
7-4. Print a Collection of WPF Visuals. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382
7-5. Configure Printing Options Using a PrintTicket. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386
■CONTENTS xi
7-6. Print a Simple Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393
7-7. Asynchronously Print a Multipage FixedDocument . . . . . . . . . . . . . 398
7-8. Programmatically Create and Save a SimpleFixedDocument. . . . 404
7-9. Use Figures and Floaters in a FlowDocument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408
7-10. Programmatically Create and Save a FlowDocument. . . . . . . . . . 410
7-11. Asynchronously Save a FixedDocument toan XPS File . . . . . . . . 415
7-12. Display a Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420
7-13. Annotate a Document with Sticky Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425
7-14. Use Highlighting in a Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431
7-15. Load and Save User-Defined Annotations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437
7-16. Print a Document’s Annotations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447
■CHAPTER 8 Multithreading. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453
8-1. Execute a Method Asynchronously Using the
Dispatcher Queue. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 454
8-2. Load the Data for a Window Asynchronously After It
Has Rendered . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457
8-3. Load the Items in a ListBox Asynchronously . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460
8-4. Check Whether You Are Running on the UI Thread. . . . . . . . . . . . . 464
8-5. Ensure That You Are Running on the UI Thread. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 467
8-6. Execute a Method Asynchronously Using a Background
Worker Thread . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469
8-7. Track the Progress of a Background Worker Thread . . . . . . . . . . . 473
8-8. Support the Cancellation of a Background Worker Thread. . . . . . . 476
8-9. Create a Background Worker Thread in XAML. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480
8-10. Update the UI Asynchronously on a Timer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483
8-11. Show a Continuous Animation During an
Asynchronous Process. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486
8-12. Show a ProgressBar While Processing on a
Background Thread . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 489
8-13. Show a Cancellable ProgressBar While Processing
on a Background Thread . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 493
8-14. Show a Continuous Progress Bar While Processing
on a Background Thread . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 496
8-15. Implement Application.DoEvents in WPF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 499
8-16. Create a Separate Thread for Each Window in a
Multiwindow Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 503
xii ■CONTENTS
■CHAPTER 9 Working with 2D Graphics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 511
9-1. Draw a Line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 512
9-2. Draw a Sequence of Connected Lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513
9-3. Format Lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515
9-4. Draw a Curved Line. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518
9-5. Draw Simple Shapes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 521
9-6. Draw Complex Shapes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 523
9-7. Create Reusable Shapes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 525
9-8. Display a Tool Tip on a Shape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 528
9-9. Display Graphics Elements in a Tool Tip. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 530
9-10. Use System Colors in Your Graphics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 531
9-11. Draw or Fill a Shape Using a Solid Color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 533
9-12. Fill a Shape with a Linear or Radial Color Gradient. . . . . . . . . . . . 536
9-13. Fill a Shape with an Image. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539
9-14. Fill a Shape with a Pattern or Texture. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 542
9-15. Fill a Shape with a View of Active UI Elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 546
9-16. Apply Blur Effects on UI Elements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 548
9-17. Apply a Glow Effect to Your UI Elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 552
9-18. Apply a Drop Shadow Effect to Your UI Elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . 554
9-19. Scale, Skew, Rotate, or Position Graphics Elements. . . . . . . . . . . 558
■CHAPTER 10 Working with 3D Graphics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 563
10-1. Use 3D in Your Application. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 564
10-2. Use a 3D Camera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 566
10-3. Draw a 3D Model. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 570
10-4. Light a Scene. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 573
10-5. Specify a Material for a Model. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 578
10-6. Apply Textures to a Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 583
10-7. Interact with 3D Objects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 586
10-8. Use a 2D Control in a 3D Scene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 590
■CHAPTER 11 Creating Animation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 595
11-1. Animate the Property of a Control. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 596
11-2. Animate a Property of a Control Set with a Data Binding. . . . . . . 600
11-3. Remove Animations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 604
11-4. Overlap Animations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 609
■CONTENTS xiii
11-5. Animate Several Properties in Parallel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 611
11-6. Create a Keyframe-Based Animation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 614
11-7. Control the Progress of an Animation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 617
11-8. Animate the Shape of a Path. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 620
11-9. Loop and Reverse an Animation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 623
11-10. Limit the Frame Rate of a Storyboard. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 626
11-11. Limit the Frame Rate for All Animations inan Application. . . . . 629
11-12. Animate an Object Along a Path . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 632
11-13. Play Back Audio or Video with a MediaTimeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . 635
11-14. Synchronize Timeline Animations with a MediaTimeline. . . . . . 637
11-15. Receive Notification When an Animation Completes . . . . . . . . . 641
11-16. Animate the Color of a Brush with Indirect Property Targeting . 644
11-17. Control Animations Through Triggers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 646
11-18. Animate Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 651
■CHAPTER 12 Dealing with Multimedia and User Input. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 653
12-1. Play System Sounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 653
12-2. Use Triggers to Play Audio When a UserInteracts
with a Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 656
12-3. Play a Media File. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 658
12-4. Respond When the User Clicks a UI Element with the Mouse . . . 663
12-5. Respond When the User Clicks a UI Element in a
Container with the Mouse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 666
12-6. Respond When the User Rotates the MouseWheel . . . . . . . . . . . 669
12-7. Drag Items from a List and Drop Them onaCanvas . . . . . . . . . . 672
12-8. Handle Keyboard Events. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 676
12-9. Query Keyboard State. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 679
12-10. Suppress Keyboard and Mouse Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 682
■CHAPTER 13 Migrating and Windows Forms Interoperability . . . . . . . . . 685
13-1. Use WPF Windows in a Windows FormsApplication . . . . . . . . . . 686
13-2. Use WPF Controls in Windows Forms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 689
13-3. Use Windows Forms in a WPF Application. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 693
13-4. Use Windows Forms Controls in a WPFWindow. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 696
■INDEX. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 701
C H A P T E R 1
■ ■ ■
Building and Debugging
WPF Applications
W
PF provides a great deal of powerful functionality that you can leverage to simplify and speed
up the development and debugging processes of your applications. This includes functionality that
would have required a great deal of effort in WinForms. From sharing resources across your appli-
cation to creating custom properties that you can use in animations and bindings to narrowing
down the debugging process of data bindings, there’s something for everyone.
This chapter focuses on the basics of building a rich WPF application and some methods
that you can use to help ease the debugging of data bindings. The recipes in this chapter describe
how to:
• Create a standard WPF application (recipe 1-1)
• Handle an unhandled exception (recipe 1-2)
• Create and use dependency properties (recipes 1-3, 1-4, 1-5, 1-6, 1-7, 1-8, and 1-9)
• Handle resources in an application (recipes 1-10, 1-11, and 1-12)
• Share properties throughout an application (recipe 1-13)
• Create a single-instance application (recipe 1-14)
• Manage multiple windows in an application (recipe 1-15)
• Debug data bindings (recipes 1-16 and 1-17)
1-1. Create a Standard WPF Application
Problem
You need to create a new, rich WPF desktop application.
Solution
Create a new project with a single App.xaml file, containing the main entry point for your
application.
1