Develop Reference

How to imitate OuterGlowBitmapEffect using WPF effects?

I tried using DropShadowEffect but it's "glow" strength weakens when you increase BlurRadius. I want to have strong outer glow like the image below.
If I stack the same effect a dozen times I am able to get this, but the performance tanks after this. Is this possible to do using WPF with a single effect?

Depending on how large you want the radius of the blur to be and how smooth the result needs to be, you could stack different effects like gradient stops instead of repeatedly stacking the same effect.
Like you pointed out, the DropShadowEffect strength gets weaker as the BlurRadius increases.
<TextBox Text="DropShadowEffect">
<TextBox.Effect>
<DropShadowEffect BlurRadius="50"
ShadowDepth="0"
Color="Blue"
Opacity="1"/>
</TextBox.Effect>
</TextBox>
Additionally, applying effects directly to the TextBox impacts the rendering quality of the text. The proposed solution to the linked question (setting TextOptions.TextFormattingMode="Display" on the Window) also has layout implications. Instead, you can draw a Rectangle with a BlurEffect behind your element.
<Rectangle Fill="Blue"
Height={Binding ElementName=MyTextBox, Path=ActualHeight}"
Width={Binding ElementName=MyTextBox, Path=ActualWidth}">
<Rectangle.Effect>
<BlurEffect Radius="50"/>
</Rectangle.Effect>
</Rectangle>
<TextBox x:Name="MyTextBox" Text="Rectangle with BlurEffect"/>
You can then add an additional Rectangle for each gradient stop. Here there are two: one at 50 to define the overall size of the blur, and one at 30 to strengthen the glow around the control.
<Rectangle Fill="Blue"
Height={Binding ElementName=MyTextBox, Path=ActualHeight}"
Width={Binding ElementName=MyTextBox, Path=ActualWidth}">
<Rectangle.Effect>
<BlurEffect Radius="50"/>
</Rectangle.Effect>
</Rectangle>
<Rectangle Fill="Blue"
Height={Binding ElementName=MyTextBox, Path=ActualHeight}"
Width={Binding ElementName=MyTextBox, Path=ActualWidth}">
<Rectangle.Effect>
<BlurEffect Radius="30"/>
</Rectangle.Effect>
</Rectangle>
<TextBox x:Name="MyTextBox" Text="Two Rectangles with BlurEffect"/>
You asked about the perceived sharpness around the corners of the TextBox and I must admit I don't have a good solution. I initially considered rounding the corners of the blurred elements behind your control by using a Border instead of a Rectangle, but I honestly don't see much of a difference.
<!-- Remove the CornerRadius property for square corners. -->
<Border CornerRadius="10" Background="Blue">
<Border.Effect>
<BlurEffect Radius="50"/>
</Border.Effect>
</Border>
<Border CornerRadius="10" Background="Blue">
<Border.Effect>
<BlurEffect Radius="30"/>
</Border.Effect>
</Border>
Of course, you could always make the background objects larger than your control. Here they are in the same cell of a Grid but there is extra space for the Border to grow because the TextBox has a Margin. A smaller top/bottom margin and larger left/right margin means the glow will be more uniform around the control.
<!-- These items should be in the same cell of a Grid -->
<Border CornerRadius="10" Background="Blue">
<Border.Effect>
<BlurEffect Radius="50"/>
</Border.Effect>
</Border>
<Border CornerRadius="10" Background="Blue">
<Border.Effect>
<BlurEffect Radius="30"/>
</Border.Effect>
</Border>
<TextBox Text="TextBox has an 8px, 4px margin" Margin="8 4"/>

How to position "Selection Box" with ItemContainerStyle of a ListView?

I've been reading this documentation and I was wondering if it's possible to position the selection check box of the container? Specifically, this thing here:
Ideally, I want it aligned on the right. So far I've tried to use
<ListView.ItemContainerStyle>
<Style TargetType="WHAT DO I WRITE HERE?">
<Setter Property="HorizontalAlignment" Value="Right"/>
</Style>
</ListView.ItemContainerStyle>
With various TargetTypes. Is it even possible to position that Selection-box?

To be honest you're looking in the wrong place. The ItemContainerStyle is adjust the margin padding and such properties of the container of the items of a listview.
What You need is a style for a ListViewItem. Lucky for us it's easily available from the ListViewItem styles and templates from the MSDN Documentation.
I won't paste the whole code here since, it's huge and it's cause deviated focus from the actual code that you need to tweak.
From the style from the above link, pick the second style of the two mentioned and refer to the below code:
<Border x:Name="MultiSelectSquare"
BorderBrush="{ThemeResource SystemControlForegroundBaseMediumHighBrush}"
BorderThickness="2"
Width="20"
Height="20"
Margin="12,0,0,0"
VerticalAlignment="Center"
HorizontalAlignment="Left"
Visibility="Collapsed" >
<Border.Clip>
<RectangleGeometry Rect="0,0,20,20">
<RectangleGeometry.Transform>
<TranslateTransform x:Name="MultiSelectClipTransform"/>
</RectangleGeometry.Transform>
</RectangleGeometry>
</Border.Clip>
<Border.RenderTransform>
<TranslateTransform x:Name="MultiSelectCheckBoxTransform"/>
</Border.RenderTransform>
<FontIcon x:Name="MultiSelectCheck"
FontFamily="{ThemeResource SymbolThemeFontFamily}"
Glyph=""
FontSize="16"
Foreground="{ThemeResource SystemControlForegroundBaseMediumHighBrush}"
Visibility="Collapsed"
Opacity="0"/>
</Border>
The above code handles the checkbox kinda tick mark with border for SelectionMode="Multiple".
All the changes you want to do must be done in this style and the above code section of the style.
Please Note: I would advise not to play around with Visibility and Opacity property as they are modified using VisualStates. Don't worry about them they'll change states at runtime.

WPF container artifacts when content is more than container

I'm creating styles for control and faced up a strange problem.
Just compare:
The normal slider:
What I get when I decrease image container:
What this is? That's not my border, I'm not use any borders or something like that. It affect's not only images. It's just example. How avoid this behavior?
The code when I decreased container(Thumb) size:
<Track.Thumb>
<Thumb x:Name="Thumb" Height="15" Width="15">
<Thumb.Template>
<ControlTemplate TargetType="Thumb">
<Image Source="../Images/Player/slider_thumb.png" Height="17" Width="17" />
</ControlTemplate>
</Thumb.Template>
</Thumb>
</Track.Thumb>

Blurry text in WPF even with ClearTypeHinting enabled?

I have a grid with this template and styles in WPF/XAML:
<Setter Property="TextOptions.TextFormattingMode" Value="Display" />
<Setter Property="RenderOptions.ClearTypeHint" Value="Enabled" />
<Setter Property="Template">
<Setter.Value>
<ControlTemplate TargetType="{x:Type DataGridCell}">
<Border Padding="{TemplateBinding Padding}" BorderBrush="{TemplateBinding BorderBrush}" BorderThickness="{TemplateBinding BorderThickness}" Background="{TemplateBinding Background}" SnapsToDevicePixels="True">
<ContentPresenter x:Name="CellContent" SnapsToDevicePixels="{TemplateBinding SnapsToDevicePixels}" RenderOptions.ClearTypeHint="Enabled" />
</Border>
<ControlTemplate.Triggers>
<Trigger Property="IsSelected" Value="True">
<Setter TargetName="CellContent" Property="TextOptions.TextFormattingMode" Value="Display" />
<Setter TargetName="CellContent" Property="RenderOptions.ClearTypeHint" Value="Enabled" />
<Setter TargetName="CellContent" Property="Effect">
<Setter.Value>
<DropShadowEffect ShadowDepth="2" BlurRadius="2" Color="Black" RenderingBias="Quality" />
</Setter.Value>
</Setter>
</Trigger>
</ControlTemplate.Triggers>
</ControlTemplate>
</Setter.Value>
</Setter>
The DropShadowEffect I have when you select a grid row, seems to make the text rendering blurry (gray anti-aliasing):
When I remove the drop shadow effect, it looks clear because it now uses ClearType and not gray sub-pixel anti-aliasing:
I have tried applying RenderOptions.ClearTypeHint="Enabled" to the ContentPresenter as seen above, but it does not help.
How do I force WPF to render the text that gets displayed with drop shadow effect to retain Cleartype anti-aliasing, instead of that ugly blurry gray sub-pixel anti-aliasing?
Some believe it's blurry because of the drop shadow -- this is not true. It's blurry only because ClearType is not used. This is how it looks like in Firefox when shadow AND ClearType:
ClearType enabled text is colorful -- but that blurry text is not, because it does not use ClearType -- it uses gray sub-pixel anti-aliasing and that's not how ClearType works: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ClearType
The question is: how do I enable ClearType for this text?

How about setting TextOptions.TextFormattingMode to Display as well as RenderOptions.BitmapScalingMode to NearestNeighbor? The latter is new in WPF 3.5 SP1 and I normally use it to remove the blur. :)
<TextBlock Text="Hello world" TextOptions.TextFormattingMode="Display"
RenderOptions.BitmapScalingMode="NearestNeighbor"
HorizontalAlignment="Center" TextWrapping="Wrap"
VerticalAlignment="Center" Foreground="White" FontFamily="Microsoft Sans Serif">
<TextBlock.Effect>
<DropShadowEffect ShadowDepth="2" BlurRadius="2" Color="Black"
RenderingBias="Quality"/>
</TextBlock.Effect>
</TextBlock>
Below is how it looks like.
And this is how it looks like in FireFox.

The DropShadowEffect object cannot work with ClearType. This is stated on the MSDN page How to: Create Text with a Shadow:
These shadow effects do not go through the Windows Presentation
Foundation (WPF) text rendering pipeline. As a result, ClearType is
disabled when using these effects.
After all, DropShadowEffect is a bitmap effect, not a text effect.

To achieve a similar result without using an effect, you can render the text twice, once slightly offset from the other:
<Grid>
<TextBlock Text="Here is some sample text" Foreground="Black" Margin="1,1,0,0"/>
<TextBlock Text="Here is some sample text" Foreground="White"/>
</Grid>
This yields the desired result:
You could also encapsulate this into a control (called ShadowTextBlock, perhaps) so that you don't have to go repeating yourself everywhere.

What about combining the two ideas. Draw the text with DropShadowEffect, and overlay it with the same text drawn without effect, like shown in the third line here:
Still not perfect, and i find it a little bold. But perhaps something you could live with. The XAML:
<StackPanel Background="LightSteelBlue" RenderOptions.ClearTypeHint="Enabled" SnapsToDevicePixels="True" >
<Grid Margin="5">
<TextBlock Foreground="Black" Text="Here is some sample text" Margin="1"/>
<TextBlock Foreground="White" Text="Here is some sample text"/>
</Grid>
<TextBlock Margin="5" Foreground="White" Text="Here is some sample text">
<TextBlock.Effect>
<DropShadowEffect ShadowDepth="2" BlurRadius="2" Color="Black" RenderingBias="Quality"/>
</TextBlock.Effect>
</TextBlock>
<Grid Margin="5">
<TextBlock Foreground="White" Text="Here is some sample text">
<TextBlock.Effect>
<DropShadowEffect ShadowDepth="2" BlurRadius="2" Color="Black" RenderingBias="Quality"/>
</TextBlock.Effect>
</TextBlock>
<TextBlock Foreground="White" Text="Here is some sample text"/>
</Grid>
</StackPanel>

The reason this doesn't work, and the reason you won't be able to get it to work, has to do with ClearType's sensitivity to what it's rendering on top of. For ClearType to look correct it essentially needs to do per-component alpha blending. That is, a separate alpha value for red, green, and blue (normally alpha applies to all 3). What this means is that ClearType absolutely must be rendered into a bitmap that is already opaque (all alpha values are 255) (you'll notice that window title bars still have ClearType, but they use some super secret tricks to do this).
The next step to understanding this is that WPF effects first render into an off-screen bitmap, and are then combined with what's beneath (in this case, solid white, or maybe blue if it's selected).
So, the text is first rendered into a clear, transparent bitmap. Since it has no idea what will eventually be below it, it must render using grayscale instead of ClearType. Then, the effect is applied to that bitmap. Then the bitmap is drawn to where you expect it to be on-screen, and there's no chance of getting ClearType even if it's on top of a solid color with no transparency.
As a possible workaround, try using 2 copies of the text. First, apply the effect to the "lower" version of the text (by "lower" I mean it should have a lower Z-index value, and that is the case if it is "first" in the XAML). Then, draw normal text on top of it (which will get ClearType). I think this will work but I haven't tried it, and you'll probably have to experiment until you get the desired visual outcome.

I know this post is old but if anyone is having problems with blurry text, a border drop shadow could be the culprit. I have custom panels with a drop shadow and only when the panels were placed side by side was the text blurry. I found the answer from this Why everything in WPF is blurry? post. The solution for me was ecreif's answer and not the accepted answer. Add this to your control
UseLayoutRounding="True"
RenderOptions.BitmapScalingMode="NearestNeighbor"
SnapsToDevicePixels="True
RenderOptions.ClearTypeHint="Enabled"

Button how to remove border

I have a question about dat wpf buttons.
In my app I have fore example some code
<Button x:Name="SukaKnopka" VerticalAlignment="Top" HorizontalAlignment="Right" Background="Black" MaxHeight="20" MaxWidth="20" BorderBrush="Black">
<Image Source="ButtonsImages/close_btn.png" Stretch="Fill"/>
</Button>
All is fine but there is some little border around this button =( I have tryed BorderBrush="{x:Null}"
but the border again present. (This border highlights if MouseOver)

As far as I understand it, a lot of WPF controls are fully defined in their styles. So even if you specify a different border on a Button, for example; the Button's existing styles will override whatever you have specified. To overcome this, you must create a ControlTemplate.

<Button>
<Button.Resources>
<Style TargetType="Border">
<Setter Property="BorderThickness" Value="0" />
</Style>
</Button.Resources>
</Button>
This should do the trick. It will set every BorderThickness or every Border inside the button to 0.

slade is right, try modifying what you have to look more like the following and it should give you what you want.
<Button x:Name="SukaKnopka" VerticalAlignment="Top" HorizontalAlignment="Right" Background="Black" MaxHeight="20" MaxWidth="20" BorderBrush="Black">
<Button.Template>
<ControlTemplate>
<Image Source="ButtonsImages/close_btn.png" Stretch="Fill"/>
</ControlTemplate>
</Button.Template>
</Button>

Been a while since I did any "real" WPF, but does
BorderThickness="0,0,0,0"
work?