WPF simple tips-and-tricks? [closed]

Answer 1

The property is BorderThickness. No matter how many times you type BorderWidth, it's not going to work!

Answer 2

Include curly braces in the content of a control.

<Button Content="{}{This is not a markup extension.}"/>

Answer 3

Calculate the available real estate as a percentage:

<Grid.RowDefinitions>
  <RowDefinition Height="0.25*"/>
  <RowDefinition Height="0.25*"/>
  <RowDefinition Height="0.25*"/>
  <RowDefinition Height="0.25*"/>
</Grid.RowDefinitions>

EDIT:

This works but is not indicative of how the * parameter functions. This:

<Grid.RowDefinitions>
  <RowDefinition Height="*"/>
  <RowDefinition Height="*"/>
  <RowDefinition Height="*"/>
  <RowDefinition Height="*"/>
</Grid.RowDefinitions>

provides the same functionality. If you want something other than equal height rows you can use:

<Grid.RowDefinitions>
  <RowDefinition Height="1*"/>
  <RowDefinition Height="2*"/>
  <RowDefinition Height="3*"/>
  <RowDefinition Height="4*"/>
</Grid.RowDefinitions>

which will divide the available height by 10 and maintain the relative height of each row. Alternatively, the values could be 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, and 0.4 or any proportional value.

Answer 4

Set a debug style that provides visual cues:

<Window.Resources>

  <Style x:Key="DebugGrid" TargetType="Grid">
    <Style.Triggers>
      <Trigger Property="IsMouseOver" Value="True">
        <Setter Property="ShowGridLines" Value="True"/>
      </Trigger>
    </Style.Triggers>
  </Style>

</Window.Resources>

<Grid Name="Grid"
      Style="{StaticResource DebugGrid}"
      Background="Black">...

Answer 5

A control with the background set to Transparent will NOT fire the IsMouseOver or IsMouseDirectlyOver events. For example, if a Border Background is set to Transparent but the BorderBrush=Blue and the BorderWidth is <> 0, the MouseOver events will fire while over the Border itself but not while over the interior of the control.

Answer 6

A new feature of WPF delivered with 3.5 SP1 is the ability to format your string while binding. It eliminates the usage of IValueConverter for such common scenarios. Here are some examples to get you going which I copied from this blog post

<TextBox Text="{Binding Path=Double, StringFormat=F3}"/>
<TextBox Text="{Binding Path=Double, StringFormat=Amount: {0:C}}"/>
<TextBox Text="{Binding Path=Double, StringFormat=Amount: \{0:C\}}"/>
<TextBox>
  <TextBox.Text>
    <Binding Path="Double" StringFormat="{}{0:C}"/>
  </TextBox.Text>
</TextBox>