Open Windows 10 touch keyboard docked in WPF

Question

We started creating a WPF touch application in Windows 8 and recently migrated to Windows 10. One feature we implemented is opening the Windows Keyboard when a TextBox

Answer 1

Check this article: http://www.codeproject.com/Tips/1120263/Virtual-Keyboard-TabTip-integration-in-WPF-on-Win

Virtual Keyboard will open when any such element will get focus, and it will close when element will lose focus.

Answer 2

I open-sourced my project to automate everything concerning TabTip integration in WPF app.

You can get it on nuget, and after that all you need is a simple config in your apps startup logic:

TabTipAutomation.BindTo<TextBox>();

You can bind TabTip automation logic to any UIElement. Virtual Keyboard will open when any such element will get focus, and it will close when element will lose focus. Not only that, but TabTipAutomation will move UIElement (or Window) into view, so that TabTip will not block focused element.

For more info refer to the project site.

To clarify: If you will be using this package TabTip will not be docked, but your UI will be in view, which i guess is what you wanted to achieve.

Answer 3

EDIT: In the case when WindowStyle is set to None, please check out my answer here. Also for manually handling touch keyboard appearance events, check out the sample code here.

The answers here are quite old, currently the touch keyboard works just fine when tapping any textbox, even if the window is maximized.

I recommend targeting at least .NET 4.6.2 to get the best support for touch keyboards in Windows 10, due to a bug in WPF that was fixed in that version. Read more here, scroll down to WPF section.

The only thing you'll have to do is design your XAML in a way that your user interface can react properly when the touch keyboard shows up. Usually putting your content inside a ScrollViewer like so should be enough:

<ScrollViewer PanningMode="VerticalOnly"
              VerticalScrollBarVisibility="Hidden" 
              HorizontalScrollBarVisibility="Disabled"
    <!--Content here-->
</ScrollViewer>

But for more advanced scenarios, like moving buttons that are at the bottom to above the keyboard, you'll need to write your XAML inside the ScrollViewer more carefully, for example by using grids with dynamic heights.

Hope this helps!