WPF: Disable ListBox, but enable scrolling

Question

Been banging my head against this all morning.

Basically, I have a listbox, and I want to keep people from changing the selection during a long running process, but

Answer 1

I found that putting a disabled ListBox in a ScrollViewer with auto scrolling enabled gives the desired effect.

Answer 2

While it's for Silverlight, maybe this blog post would help you get going in the right direction? Silverlight No Selection ListBox and ViewBox

Answer 3

This worked best for me. It's easy and whole code is in XAML which is IMO very neat.

<ListBox ItemsSource="{Binding MySource}">
  <ListBox.ItemContainerStyle>
    <Style TargetType="ListBoxItem">
      <Style.Triggers>
        <DataTrigger Binding="{Binding IsEditing}" Value="True">
          <Setter Property="IsEnabled" Value="True"/>
        </DataTrigger>
        <DataTrigger Binding="{Binding IsEditing}" Value="False">
          <Setter Property="IsEnabled" Value="False"/>
        </DataTrigger>
      </Style.Triggers>
    </Style>
  </ListBox.ItemContainerStyle>  
</ListBox>

Answer 4

There seem to be many ways to skin this particular cat. I found that by setting IsHitTestVisible on the ItemsContainerStyle in XAML I got exactly what I needed:

<ListBox IsHitTestVisible="true" ScrollViewer.VerticalScrollBarVisibility="Auto" ScrollViewer.CanContentScroll="True">
    <ListBox.ItemContainerStyle>
        <Style TargetType="ListBoxItem">
            <Setter Property="IsHitTestVisible" Value="False" />
        </Style>
    </ListBox.ItemContainerStyle>
</ListBox>

Answer 5

Another option worth considering is disabling the ListBoxItems. This can be done by setting the ItemContainerStyle as shown in the following snippet.

<ListBox ItemsSource="{Binding YourCollection}">
    <ListBox.ItemContainerStyle>
        <Style TargetType="ListBoxItem">
            <Setter Property="IsEnabled" Value="False" />
        </Style>
    </ListBox.ItemContainerStyle>
</ListBox>

If you don't want the text to be grey you can specify the disabled color by adding a brush to the style's resources with the following key: {x:Static SystemColors.GrayTextBrushKey}. The other solution would be to override the ListBoxItem control template.

This question is pretty much the same as this one: There ain't ListBox.SelectionMode=“None”, is there another way to disable selection in a listbox? and my answer is the same.

Answer 6

Well, I found a sweet way to provide this feature. What I did is that in the DataTemplate of the listBox I binded the parent layout enable property with the boolean flag using Page as Source.

Step 1 - Provide the x:Name attribute to the page. If the page you are using is extended with base page than make sure that the base page is not an abstract class and has an default constructor without any arguments.

<Page x:Class="OPMS.Views.Registration"
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
    xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"
    xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008"
    x:Name="MainPage"
    d:DesignWidth="1024"
    Title="Registration"
>

Step 2 - Use the Page as a source for the DataTemplate parent layout items IsEnabled property

<ListBox Grid.Row="2"
    ItemsSource="{Binding TestGroups}"
    AlternationCount="2"
    Padding="0"
    Margin="10,5,10,10"
>
    <ListBox.ItemTemplate>
        <DataTemplate>
            <CheckBox Content="{Binding Name}"
                IsChecked="{Binding IsSelected}"
                IsEnabled="{Binding Source={x:Reference MainPage}, Path=DataContext.BindingVariableHere}"
            />
        </DataTemplate>
    </ListBox.ItemTemplate>
</ListBox>