Creating custom forms in WPF?

Question

I\'m currently learning WPF. I really am enjoying it so far. I love how easy it is to make great looking apps, and would like to create an app that has a custom window borde

Answer 1

Here's a great article on customizing Window "chrome" with WPF:

Custom Window Chrome in WPF

It is accompanied by a Code Gallery project from which you can download the code:

WPF Chrome

Answer 2

There is a product called "Blendables" which contains a ChromelessWindow control in their "Essentials Mix" bundle which makes this very easy to do. I've never actually used it myself, I just know it exists and thought it might be of use. At bare minimum it shows that you can do what you ask about creating reusable, templatable chrome.

Answer 3

To show non-standard borders you have to set AllowsTransparency=True and no Border from the window. Whether you want to do this in the class is up to you. You basically have to realize WPF is really just a DirectX application hosted in a standard window. So you if you want non-standard Windows behavior, you have to drop the standard window border and start re-wiring it based on the standard window events you want to handle. Dragging, minimize/maximize/restore, Title bar.

Really, it shouldn't take you more than 30 minutes to an hour to come up with something close to what you want, and you could certainly put your custom window in a base class for re-use on down the road.

I have a feeling, for most cases, this is going to be the better and quicker option than trying override default Windows drawing.