Develop Reference

Disable StackPanel Highlighting in XAML

I have found very little information about this matter. Know that I am a newbie to C# and WPF:
I have a stack panel defined in a XAML file as such :
<StackPanel Orientation="Vertical" >
<TextBlock Text="Locale: " VerticalAlignment="Center"/>
<ComboBox x:Name="comboLocale" Width="60" VerticalAlignment="Center" SelectionChanged="comboLocale_SelectionChanged"/>
</StackPanel>
I want to disable the highlighting that happens when I MouseOver the stack panel, which creates a blue color inside the StackPanel for some reason. I don't have any special style set up yet. Some threads talked about setting OverridesDefaultStyle to TRUE, but this didn't seem to change anything. Also, StackPanel do not have a ControlTemplate available, so most of the solutions I found couldn't be applied since they refer to a Button or TextBlock.
Any input on the matter would be greatly appreciated!
-Regards

StackPanels in general have no visual representation and are just layout containers which control placement of other elements. Given that you haven't set anything like Background on your StackPanel, it isn't what's causing the highlight you're seeing unless some other part of your XAML or code is modifying it. The behavior you describe sounds like the default behavior of a Button but without seeing more of your code it's hard to tell where the behavior is coming from.

Since you mentioned in a comment you've found out you're actually looking at the expected behavior of a Menu as your culprit. You'll just need to edit the MenuItem Control Template, more specifically the IsHighlighted that's causing your highlight. You'd likely find something like this helpful.
Or there's lots more various information found with a quick search for customizing a WPF Menu / MenuItem, hope this helps.

Changing the page header text in XAML

How do I change the default page header in a Windows 8 XAML application? The question is simple, just I am still learning XAML.
<Page.DataContext>
<local:MainPageViewModel/>
</Page.DataContext>
<!-- PageAdornerControl displays the back button and a page title -->
<Layout:PageAdornerControl
Background="{StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundThemeBrush}"
Header="{Binding Header}">
I see Header as the text. My first thought was to change {Binding Header} to {Binding }, however a mouse over on Header shows that as some valid whatever. Also, I would like to use the Visual Studio 2012 properties window to change the text.

There might be other ways, and I am still less than green with XAML, but here is one way using Nate's pageAdornerControl method.
Place the cursor on the Layout:PageAdornerControl in the XAML code area.
Go to the properties window, which should show the type as PageAdornerControl.
Scroll down to header
From the dropdown list, select Go to Source
You will now see another section of code highlighted.
Go to the properties window and the Header attribute will be the actual header text, which you can edit.

Custom Control or Slider like Control

What i am basically looking out for is a combination of controls that work as 1 whole. I have no idea what the best way would be to start solving this problem in WPF, either a custom control, existing control, slider...?
Only thing i do not want are 3th party controls and the such.
When a certain condition is met a button with text will be placed inside the slider. Every time when certain conditions are met this situation will keep on happening and buttons will be placed inside the border field.
So it could be possible i have like 10 buttons after each other inside the border. The 2 navigation buttons to the left and right serve as navigation between all those buttons so all can actually get view and pressed when needed for further actions.
Picture that illustrates what i wish to achieve:

You can start with something simple as a StackPanel (you dont need to put it in a page but i wanted to make it copy paste friendly):
<Page
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml">
<StackPanel>
<Button Content="Left"/>
<ListBox>
<ListBoxItem>btnTest 10:00h</ListBoxItem>
<ListBoxItem>btnTest 11:00h</ListBoxItem>
</ListBox>
<Button Content="Right"/>
</StackPanel>
</Page>
Then focus on the appearance and behavior separately.
You need to learn WPF styles, so you can get the colors and layout as in your sample picture. This will also let you make the ListBox horizontal.
Look into the concept of a ViewModel to learn how to populate the ListBox with items. And event handlers for the buttons.
Its a very broad question but I hope this gives you a start.

How can I pop a control out of it's container to make it full screen when clicked in Silverlight/Wp7?

So I have a Panorama control and the PanoramaItems are programmatically added to the control using the following template.
<UserControl>
<Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot">
<controls:PanoramaItem Name="sitePanoramaItem" Header="{Binding Name}">
<Controls:DockPanel VerticalAlignment="Stretch">
<StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal" Margin="0,10,0,0" Controls:DockPanel.Dock="Top">
<Image Source="../Images/action.png" Width="64" />
<TextBlock Text="{Binding Stats, Mode=TwoWay}" FontSize="45" Margin="15,0,0,0" />
</StackPanel>
<Grid x:Name="graphCanvas" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" Margin="10,10,10,10"> </Grid>
</Controls:DockPanel>
</controls:PanoramaItem>
</Grid>
</UserControl>
When I click on graphCanvas what I'd like to do is sorta pop the graphCanvas out and display that fullscreen then when I click again restore it to where it was. I've been all over this site and Google and can't find anything similar to what I'm looking for.
I would still like to maintain the Panorama control functionality so that the graphCanvas is still the only one visible but you can cycle through them. Currently I have it sorta working in that I remove the Grid from the DockPanel and put it directly in the LayoutRoot while making the sitePanoramaItem collapsed. However, it's not fullscreen as the Panorama name is still visible (I guess I could hide that as well...) When I put the graphCanvas back int he DockPanel the size of the canvas is all screwed up.
I was hoping there was a simpler way.
Is it even possible?

It is possible to create the UI you describe but it's not going to be simple. You're on the right track with removing it in code and adding it the LayoutRoot and making the Panorama hidden. However you would have to code the scrolling behavior yourself and that is going to be quite tricky - especially making it feel the way to panorama does.
One trick you could try is actually layer a PivotControl on top of your Panorama and have it be collapsed by default. Also edit it's template to remove all default content eg: remove the header control, set margins to 0, etc). Then when you want to go full screen you can remove all the graphCanvases from the Panorama items and and add them to new PivotItems in the PivotControl. Then hide the Panorama and show the Pivot. This will give you scrolling capability for free and the illusion of full screen.
Having said all that I'm not sure I would recommend this. The more common approach would be to simply be to navigate to another page when the user selects an item and handle the full screen aspects there (possibly using the Pivot control again for scrolling). And when you want to leave "fullscreen" mode simply navigate back to the first page. Handling Tombstoning of the fullscreen state will be much easier with this approach for one thing.

You can try making the graphCanvas a Page and putting it in a different XAML. Then add a frame (name it InnerFrame for example) in the same place where you have the graphCanvas right now and navigate to that page with InnerFrame. When the frame is clicked, you navigate with the RootFrame of the app to your graphCanvas page. When you decide to close it, just navigate back with the RootFrame.
Hope it's clear enough :)
Edit:
Navigation in WP7 works very similar as the standard navigation in Silverlight 4, but it's a bit more restrictive. Just throw a PhoneApplicationFrame in your XAML like this:
<phone:PhoneApplicationFrame x:Name="Frame" />
This is basically the same as a Silverlight frame. All the pages you create inherit from PhoneApplicationPage by default, so they can be showed in a frame without any changes.
Your whole application actually runs on a PhoneApplicationFrame. If you take a look at your App class you will see this:
public PhoneApplicationFrame RootFrame { get; private set; }
Here's the MSDN documentation for the navigation system on WP7

WP7 App: Too large page

I have created a small WP7 app which contains one page which is dynamically filled with content. But it goes out of viewable area. Emulator doesn't scroll the page when I click-hold-move on the screen. How do I make it scroll when needed?

One simple option is to drop the content you require inside a ScrollViewer, so for example adding a large TextBlock as so:
<ScrollViewer Name="scrollViewer" ScrollViewer.HorizontalScrollBarVisibility="Visible" >
<TextBlock Height="30" Name="textBlock" FontSize="24"
Text="This is a long block of text which wont fit in the available area" />
</ScrollViewer>
Obviously, in most cases you will want to drop a container control such as Grid or StackPanel into the ScrollViewer and place all your other controls in there.
That said, I'm wondering if you are actually looking for some of the standard WP7 Metro look and feel controls such as the Panorama and Pivot Controls which are available in the latest dev tools - follow that link for full details.