Yay! The patch list for the Ajax Control Toolkit shows my two patches (for the dynamical adding of TabPanels to a TabContainer and the one for the zIndex of the PopupExtender) were 'applied in change set 54957'!In order to customize controls the way you want, you can either use a DataTemplate, different specific ControlTemplate properties, use the properties that the controls publish, but in the end, to get it right, you must actually change the ControlTemplate of the control itself. The best practice is to use an external resource dictionary that contains a style that changes various properties and also, if needed, the ControlTemplate.
The problem there is that there is no way to partially change the control template. I mean, yeah, I could think of a few ways, but in the end is the same thing: you need to replace the control template completely. And now you have two ... err.. actually three problems.
First, there are ways of getting the default control template, with all the functionality (we are talking about one, two or even more pages of XAML) and change only what you want. It's not trivial, but it can be done, either by copying it from the published sources (like the Windows SDK or the Expression Blend SystemThemes folder) or by using a utility like ShowMeTheTemplate.
Second, there is the issue of control templates differing depending on the Windows theme. And therefore one must either accept that the application will only look one way for every theme and Windows operating system, or provide templates for all the themes available (there are 6 defaults and a generic fallback theme).
Now, there are many tutorials about how to do that, basically just create a Themes folder, change AssemblyInfo.cs to
[assembly: ThemeInfo(
ResourceDictionaryLocation.SourceAssembly, //where theme specific resource dictionaries are located
ResourceDictionaryLocation.SourceAssembly //where the generic resource dictionary is located
)]
, copy the xaml files (with certain names) there and change them as you see fit. There is a catch, though! This will only work on your custom controls. Default controls already have a template in the operating system theme, so you need to do one extra thing in order to overwrite them, and that is to write the following in the a parent control Resources block:
<ResourceDictionary>
<ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
<ResourceDictionary Source="{ThemeDictionary [LibraryOrApplicationNamespace]}" />
</ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
</ResourceDictionary>
otherwise it will NOT work.
You can get the same result by adding this to the static constructor of the control, provided you have access to the sources:
DefaultStyleKeyProperty.OverrideMetadata(typeof([MyControlClass]), new FrameworkPropertyMetadata(typeof(MyControlClass)));
One thing you also need to be aware of is that Visual Studio caches the themes. If you change them, especially if you do it outside visual Studio, you need to force a Rebuild of the project.
I've decided to write this entry before I could actually master these tools because I don't think I will afterwards (I'd be too old to type). So here it goes:
All of the tools above, except ReSharper and Blend are free to use.
So I wasted 15 minutes on trying to make a converter work within a TemplateBinding. Even if there is no error returned, the converter is never called. Funny, no?
I was trying to bind a property to the value of a property of the parent UserControl in WPF. When you google for it you get something pretty interesting: give a name to the user control right inside the user control XAML, then reference it with ElementName.
What I found after hours of torment was that this doesn't always work. I guess it only works up to the first item container in the logical tree and then stops. So that when I tried to use a property ImageSource of the user control in a Menu.Icon it failed!
My solution looks pretty ugly, but it does work in all cases!
<Image Source="{Binding RelativeSource={RelativeSource FindAncestor,AncestorType={x:Type Controls:MyUserControl}},Path=MainMenuImageSource}"
Width="16" Height="16"></Image>
In other words: find the ancestor of the type of your user control and use it as the RelativeSource of the binding.
Update: When I had more time to thing I realised that a MultiBinding needs a Converter, but a simple Binding also has a Converter and I guess that is what I should have used. I will update the post when I get to work on Monday.
public class SectionHeaderConverter:IMultiValueConverter
{
public object Convert(object[] values, Type targetType, object parameter, CultureInfo culture)
{
List<ToolBarItem> list = new List<ToolBarItem>();
foreach (IEnumerable<ToolBarItem> collection in values)
{
foreach (ToolBarItem element in collection)
{
list.Add(element);
var toolBarSectionHeader = element as ToolBarSectionHeader;
if (toolBarSectionHeader != null)
{
foreach (var item in toolBarSectionHeader.Items)
{
list.Add(item);
}
}
}
}
return list;
}
public object[] ConvertBack(object value, Type[] targetTypes, object parameter, CultureInfo culture)
{
throw new NotImplementedException();
}
}
<MultiBinding Converter="{StaticResource SectionHeaderConverter}">
<Binding Path="Items"/>
</MultiBinding>
<Menu
ItemsSource="{Binding ElementName=ToolBarCurrent,Path=Items}"
ItemContainerStyleSelector="{StaticResource MenuItemContainerStyleSelector}"
ItemTemplateSelector="{StaticResource MenuItemTemplateStyleSelector}"
></Menu>
ItemsControl ic = ItemsControl.ItemsControlFromItemContainer(container);
var style = (Style) ic.FindResource("SectionStyle");
var ic = Helper.FindVisualParent<Grid>(container);The source for it is underneath.
.
public static TParentItem FindVisualParent<TParentItem>(DependencyObject obj)
where TParentItem : DependencyObject
{
DependencyObject current = obj;
while (current != null)
{
var tCurrent = current as TParentItem;
if (tCurrent != null)
return tCurrent;
current = VisualTreeHelper.GetParent(current);
}
return null;
}
In Windows Presentation Foundation all resources (like ImageSources or Resource packs) are relative to the namespace of the control. So if you have a folder Images that holds your application icons and you use (in the application XAML) an ImageSource of "Images/MyImage.png" it will work. But as soon as the XAML is moved somewhere in a UserControl in the Controls namespace of a library, the ImageSource becomes invalid. It would only work as "../Images/MyImage.png" or "/Images/MyImage.png", even if the Controls namespace is not a folder and the control is in a library, not in the application that runs it!Just yesterday I was struggling with the same issue, only this facette of it seems like a completely different bug. You see, I added this control to the library and everything worked fine EXCEPT the visual designer. It is known that the Visual Studio 2008 WPF designer is not the best possible piece of software, but this was one of those errors you don't know where it comes from.<HierarchicalDataTemplate DataType="{x:Type Code:League}" ItemsSource="{Binding Path=Divisions}">
<TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=Name}"/>
</HierarchicalDataTemplate> Somewhere in the Window declaration there was a xmlns:Code="clr-namespace:MyControls.Desktop.Code"which is the namespace of the test application for the control in the library.
So, I had just wasted a long time being stupid about a user control, but I had finally fixed everything and I was willing to try it out. Initially I had tested it by directly entering it in XAML, but now I wanted to add it to the toolbox and drag and drop it to the WPF form.Two short points I'd like to make about working with WPF in Visual Studio 2008:
Ok, would I like to make a music video and then all the people watching it on YouTube instead of buying the record? Well... actually yes! If they like the song they will either buy the record or download it from a peer to peer network. And it beats people NOT watching my videos and listening to my songs.It can't be done. Maybe in XAML 2009. In the old one, it just fails. I am using ReSharper and it automatically finds the controls in XAML in the loaded libraries and creates the appropriate namespace. For a library called "My Controls" it adds an "assembly=My Controls" at the end of the clr-namespace and the compilation fails with "Unknown build error".What has gone into Siderite and made him rave mad? Is he high? Everybody knows that software patterns are all the rage and the only perfect and delicious way to make software. You can't just go "cowboy style" on software, it's an industry after all.HBO has done it again. I am not a great fan of the HBO channel. The movies I see on usually suck ass, the series are cut short, it's a consumer thing. But the HBO produced movies and series are something else. Very often I am amazed of the orginality of a series idea and the quality of the show and then I see it's HBO productions.
WPF Unleashed is a 2006 book in the Unleashed series about the new Microsoft paradigm on visual interaction, written by Adam Nathan. Windows Presentation Foundation is now the default Windows graphics framework, overriding Windows Forms, and it is based on XAML, which is used in Windows desktop applications, Silverlight applications, directly in Internet Explorer and even as a document template.