Develop Reference

Controls jump to max. possible width as soon as margin or padding is set

I am developing an application using c#/WPF and .NET 4.6 and have a very strange problem which never happend before:
I have a Window containing a UserControl. The windows has SizeToContent = SizeToContent.WidthAndHeight set and the user control contains the following StackPanel:
<StackPanel>
<TextBlock Text="{Binding MainText}" />
<ProgressBar Value="{Binding Progress}"/>
<TextBlock Text="{Binding AdditionalText}"/>
<StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal">
<Image Source="{DynamicResource Icons.Colored.Info}" />
<StackPanel>
<TextBlock Text="{Binding CurrentCheckName}" />
<TextBlock Text="{Binding CurrentCheckInfo}" />
</StackPanel>
</StackPanel>
<ItemsControl ItemsSource="{Binding PastChecks}"/>
</StackPanel>
This still works fine and the window is as big as it needs to be.
BUT if I now change e.g. the ProgressBar to:
<ProgressBar Value="{Binding Progress}" Margin="10"/>
The window resizes to the max. possible width which is either MaxWidth if set or the width of all of my monitors.
I do not understand why this is happening as it never happend to me before and I have no idea what I did different this time.
Does anyone have any idea why this could be happening?

'Live' Slider value into label

I've made an app that allowes me to control a Microsoft NXT 2.0 Mindstorms robot and I've recently added a slider that I want to use to set the current engine speed instead of having a fixed value, so I need help.
Here I have the XAML of the label and slider that I want to use:
<Slider x:Name="Speed" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="40,58,0,0" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="30" Orientation="Vertical" Height="187" Maximum="90" Minimum="-90" SmallChange="1" LargeChange="10" IsSnapToTickEnabled="True" TickFrequency="5" TickPlacement="BottomRight" AutoToolTipPlacement="BottomRight" MouseUp="Speed_MouseUp" BorderBrush="#00000000" Background="#00000000" Foreground="#FF858585">
<Label x:Name="Current_Speed" Content="Currently: " HorizontalAlignment="Right" Margin="0,0,478,257" Width="60" Height="29" VerticalAlignment="Bottom" Foreground="Black" />
I want Current_Speed to write Currently: {SliderValue} I want it to write the current value of the slider instantly as I move my slider up or down like you can do with the ToolTip option.
Any ideas?
(Bear in mind, I'm not very skilled, so detailed solutions would be much appreciated)
Thank you in advance :)

It's relatively easy. The "trick" is that you need to use two different Label objects, which you can aggregate together using a StackPanel container.
For the second Label object, just set the Label's Content attribute like this:
Content="{Binding ElementName=Speed, Path=Value}"
The whole thing will look something like this:
<Slider x:Name="Speed"
HorizontalAlignment="Left" VerticalAlignment="Top"
Margin="40,58,0,0"
Width="30" Height="187"
Orientation="Vertical"
Maximum="90" Minimum="-90"
SmallChange="1" LargeChange="10"
IsSnapToTickEnabled="True" TickFrequency="5" TickPlacement="BottomRight"
AutoToolTipPlacement="BottomRight"
MouseUp="Speed_MouseUp"
BorderBrush="#00000000" Background="#00000000" Foreground="#FF858585" />
<StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal" Margin="0,0,0,257" Height="29">
<Label x:Name="Current_Speed_Text"
Content="Currently: "
HorizontalAlignment="Right" VerticalAlignment="Bottom"
Foreground="Black" />
<Label x:Name="Current_Speed"
Content="{Binding ElementName=Speed, Path=Value}"
HorizontalAlignment="Right" VerticalAlignment="Bottom"
Foreground="Black" />
</StackPanel>
Note: I have rearranged the layout a bit to ensure the UI elements are properly visible, and have reformatted the XAML itself to aid in readability.
I will also suggest that you use some other mechanism for controlling layout than setting the Margin values. The Margin attribute is very good for ensuring adequate space between elements, but it's not very good at accommodating flexible layout of elements, as it usually requires hand-modifying the margin values as other element characteristics change (e.g. font size, number of characters in the text, etc.).
Likewise, you should use Width and Height sparingly. They have similar problems.
In other words, if you apply the above suggestion to your XAML and it doesn't seem to work, it's because the Label is currently being laid out in such a way that the extra "speed value" text can't be seen.

Inline object position in XAML WP8

I want to make checkbox and textbloxk parallel or inline in my XAML WP8, but it seems the checkbox is upside and the textblock is below the checkbox. Any suggest how?
<Grid Margin="0,522,0,0" VerticalAlignment="Top" HorizontalAlignment="Left">
<StackPanel HorizontalAlignment="Center">
<CheckBox x:Name="Accept"/>
<TextBlock Text="I Accept Terms and Conditions" VerticalAlignment="Top"/>
</StackPanel>
</Grid>

You don't need TextBlock for this. Set CheckBox.Content:
<CheckBox x:Name="Accept" Content="I Accept Terms and Conditions"/>
and for other cases if want to stack elements horizontally then set Orientation="Horizontal" on you StackPanel
<StackPanel HorizontalAlignment="Center" Orientation="Horizontal">

set visibility of image dynamically in expanderview

I am trying to implement something where I need to display list of people and a green icon if they are online. these people are grouped by some categories. I am using an expanderview toolkit control to display the list. So how do I set the icon image to be visible dynamically ? I have tried something like this which didnt work.
<DataTemplate x:Key="groupsItemTemplate">
<StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal" Margin="30,5,0,0"">
<Image Height="30" Width="30" Source="/Assets/Online.png" Margin="10,5,0,0" Visibility="{Binding IsFriendOnline}"></Image>
<TextBlock TextWrapping="NoWrap" FontFamily="Segoe WP Light" FontSize="24" Margin="8,0,0,0" VerticalAlignment="Center" HorizontalAlignment="left" Height="auto" Width="300" Text="{Binding FriendName}"></TextBlock>
</StackPanel>
</DataTemplate>
IsFriendOnline is an integer property.

Firstly, you need to use a converter in order to convert the value of your IsFriendOnline property to the Visibility enum that you require.
WPF has a "BooleanToVisibilityConverter" built in so if you have the ability to change the IsFriendOnline to a boolean value (which sounds like it makes a little more sense anyway) I would go down this route... if its imperative that the property is an integer then you will need to roll your own converter which isnt difficult.
The syntax would look something like this when you have a converter (my code below assumes IsFriendOnline is a boolean)...
<BooleanToVisibilityConverter x:Key="BooleanToVisibilityConverter" />
<DataTemplate x:Key="groupsItemTemplate">
<StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal" Margin="30,5,0,0"">
<Image Height="30" Width="30" Source="/Assets/Online.png" Margin="10,5,0,0" Visibility="{Binding IsFriendOnline, Converter={StaticResource BooleanToVisibilityConverter}}"></Image>
<TextBlock TextWrapping="NoWrap" FontFamily="Segoe WP Light" FontSize="24" Margin="8,0,0,0" VerticalAlignment="Center" HorizontalAlignment="left" Height="auto" Width="300" Text="{Binding FriendName}"></TextBlock>
</StackPanel>
</DataTemplate>
Hope this helps...

Create control instance in WPF

I want to load multiple images inside a wrappanel, for each image I show a thumbnail and some image details with this code
<Border BorderThickness="1" BorderBrush="#FFD0D1D7" Padding="5" Margin="10,10,0,0">
<StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal">
<!--image and dimensions-->
<Grid Width="88" Height="55">
<Image Source="C:\img1.jpg" Width="88" Height="55"/>
<TextBlock Background="#B2000000" Foreground="White" Height="16" TextAlignment="Center" VerticalAlignment="Bottom">1280x1024</TextBlock>
</Grid>
<!--name, type and size-->
<StackPanel Orientation="Vertical" Margin="5,0,0,0" VerticalAlignment="Center">
<TextBlock Margin="1" Foreground="#FF787878">img13.jpg</TextBlock>
<TextBlock Margin="1" Foreground="#FF787878">Type: JPEG</TextBlock>
<TextBlock Margin="1" Foreground="#FF787878">Size: 321 KB</TextBlock>
</StackPanel>
</StackPanel>
</Border>
But the images are loaded at runtime, and I need some way to create instances of the above code to show the image, dimensions, name, type and size
I tried this solution https://stackoverflow.com/a/4991028/962284
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
// use xaml to declare a button as string containing xaml
sb.Append(#"<Border BorderThickness='1' BorderBrush='#FFD0D1D7' Padding='5' Margin='10,10,0,0'>
<StackPanel Orientation='Horizontal'>
<!--image and dimensions-->
<Grid Width='88' Height='55'>
<Image Source='C:\img1.jpg' Width='88' Height='55'/>
<TextBlock Background='#B2000000' Foreground='White' Height='16' TextAlignment='Center' VerticalAlignment='Bottom'>1280x1024</TextBlock>
</Grid>
<!--name, type and size-->
<StackPanel Orientation='Vertical' Margin='5,0,0,0' VerticalAlignment='Center'>
<TextBlock Margin='1' Foreground='#FF787878'>img13.jpg</TextBlock>
<TextBlock Margin='1' Foreground='#FF787878'>Type: JPEG</TextBlock>
<TextBlock Margin='1' Foreground='#FF787878'>Size: 321 KB</TextBlock>
</StackPanel>
</StackPanel>
</Border>");
FrameworkElement thumb = (FrameworkElement)System.Windows.Markup.XamlReader.Parse(sb.ToString());
ThumbnailContainer.Children.Add(thumb);
but I get the following error
I also tried with styles, but styles doesnt support multiple parameters (to specify the textblocks: dimensions, size, name, type and size) just "TemplateBinding Tag" for 1 value
What can I do to create instances of the first code to show multiple images at runtime?

Wow. That so looks like the hard way to do things. Time to embrace WPF and XAML.
I had a post about this exact same thing that wasn't quite finished. I took time to finish it for you. I even used your XAML snippet (well, a modified version of it) in the example, just for you.
http://www.wpfsharp.com/2012/10/23/displaying-images-from-a-folder-with-details-in-wpf/
Clemens is correct in his comment to use an ItemsControl.

Yes your approach is wrong and you should be doing this some other way but to get your code snippet to work try adding xmlns=\"http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation\" to your Border element in the string you are building. I suspect that is the error.