My requirement is to create a winform with contains a datagrid that allows rows to expand and show additional details. I'm considering using a WPF control and incorporate a WPF Datagrid in it to handle this, taking advantage of the RowDetails property of the DataGrid to handle the expansion of rows.
I'm completely new to WPF and the RowDetails property of Datagrid and so am only reading up on them now. Is it possible for me to use this control in my winform once I develop it? What issues may I face when trying to integrate the WPF control in my winform.
I have on multiple occasions used a WPF control on a WinForm. However, the only way I ever do it is to host it inside an ElementHost control. Once there I haven't noticed any major issues, though I do hear performance can be suspect depending on the usage.
As the two previous Answers state you have to use an ElementHost.
Here there is a comparison on how to host WPF in Winforms and Winforms in WPF. It was good for me to read the comparison when I was starting to work with it.
In this article the author links you to Gotchas For Working With Windows Forms/WPF Interop that has some common issues you can run into.
Build your WPF control like it was a Vendor control, with a clear interface and then just host it with the ElementHost. I have had to use it both ways but with legacy controls, and it really helps if you have a good interface in the control that you bring from the other platform, if not it can be a bit messy.
Related
Or what control/method I should be using to achieve the same?
I've just started transitioning from Winforms over to WPF and I tried googling as well as search on SO for the same question but to no avail. So I'm guessing it has to do more with the fact that WPF has a different method of approach entirely. I tried looking at DockPanel but I'm still quite unsure how to handle the menus/orientations and especially user-interations to reposition said menus and toolbars.
I know there are a lot of ways to achieve the same thing in WPF. But even so, what's the standard method for handling Menus like how a toolstripcontainer does?
There's no out-of-the-box control equivalent for ToolStripContainer in WPF.
But there are lots of commercial controls such as Telerik RadToolBar or DevExpress DXBars. Click the links to see their preview.
Commercial controls for WPF are mature for years so they are worth to buy.
I am looking at the possibility to host a WPF control inside a Winforms application. The reason for this is some animations inside the WinForms application. WPF should be able to support this way better because it (mostly) uses the graphic card to render instead of the CPU.
Now my question:
Are there any cons of hosting a WPF Control inside a Winforms application? Does the WPF Control still use the graphic card for the rendering or does it loose some of its advantages?
Thanks for your help. If you have any inputs or tips feel free to tell me.
EDIT
I found a similar question (but maybe that one is a bit more general, I focus more on the rendering):
Any disadvantage to using an ElementHost to host a WPF UserControl in a Winform application?
Mainly it behaves very like in a normal WPF Application.
But sometimes there are little unexpected behaviors. And it should use the hardware rendering if it would be using in normal wpf applications (depending on your configuration)
Sometimes i had problems with correctly recevien some keyboard keys in events. but there are a lot of artikels descriping the problems and solutions.
For example with some controls you could have problems catching keys. So you should have a look at System.Windows.Forms.Integration.ElementHost.EnableModelessKeyboardInterop
-> also see this blogpost
I read on MSDN and other websites (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms751797.aspx and http://www.abhishekshukla.com/wpf/advanced-wpf-part-5-of-5-interop-in-windows-presentation-foundation/) that multilevel hybrid nesting of WPF and WinForms controls is not supported...
I have an application where a WPF window has a WindowsFormsHost where inside that a WPF control is hosted in an ElementHost. This WPF control contains other WinForms controls which are also in WinFormsHost.
In short: WPF -> WinForms -> WPF -> WinForms.
So far I did not have any problems with that. After finding that small note on the MSDN page I'm wondering what exactly is not supported on that scenario, since it works for me.
Any ideas?
I would say the sense of "not supported" is "at your own risk". Most things will work, some things will not work, and it depends on your particular application whether the results will be acceptable. Or maybe you'll achieve results that are acceptable after some hacky workarounds are in place. MS aren't going to go out of there way to make it work.
I've worked with a project which contained a WinForms-WPF-WinForms nesting, and in general that worked - well enough to not rewrite the WinForms component. Focus is an issue - the nested control does not behave quite as you'd expect relating to focus gained/lost events, and keyboard focus can get stuck in the nested control. There may be a difference between whether the host element thinks it has focus and whether the contained control does. So I'd suggest focusing your testing around user input events and focus.
I created a TabControl using Windows Forms but the tab headers look very ugly. I want to make them with rounded corners and also create some space between two tab headers. Can anyone please tell how it can be done using C#.
Thanks,
gary
You'll want to do one of a few things:
Make your own custom control that inherits from TabControl and overrides its render method.
Download a third-party custom tab control that does what you want.
Switch to WPF, which gives you some more flexibility in the way of creating and styling controls.
There isn't a way to do this with System.Windows.Forms.TabControl out of the box, so you'll have to either live with what you've got, or roll your own.
Not to spark any heated debate, but WinForms is an aging API. If you're building a brand new application and/or learning a UI framework for the first time, you might consider using WPF instead. For legacy code, it's fine to maintain WinForms of course.
The System.Windows.Forms.TabControl class is just a wrapper around the Windows COMCTL32 tab control. Unfortunately, that control doesn't provide much in the way of customization options. You'll have to switch controls, either to WPF, custom code, or some third-party product.
I'm working on an application, and I have a screen that in my mind, looks a lot like the Wireless Network List in Windows Vista. For those who are unaware, its basically a listview, but in each row, instead of a line of text, there's a large 'panel' that contains all sorts of useful information. Does anyone know if that's an actual UI control available on windows, or should I roll my own with some sort of autosizing table layout panel hosting a collection of custom controls?
I know this is pretty easy to make using WPF using the stackpanel layout along with a series of user controls containing grid controls for internal layout. Or are you using windows forms?
The wireless network dialog isn't using a standard Win32 control, it's using a custom control (effectively).
If you want to emulate that behavior, you're going to have to use WPF or roll your own.
Not an exact answer but you may want to look at the various Vista TaskDialog libraries and dialogs that have been based on that. You may be able to borrow some of the code since they share some UI functionality. I need to do the something similar with WPF.