Pro WPF with VB 2008 Windows Presentation Foundation with dot NET 3.5

1089 Pages·2008·14.28 MB·English

by  Matthew MacDonald

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Books for professionals By professionals® The eXperT’s Voice® in .neT
Companion eBook Available
Pro WPF with VB 2008:
Pro
Windows Presentation Foundation with .NET 3.5 Pro
Dear Reader,
For years, .NET developers have created Windows applications with the W
Windows Forms toolkit. And though Windows Forms is mature and reasonably
WPF
full-featured, it’s hardwired to essential bits of Windows plumbing that haven’t
changed much in the past ten years. As a result, some tasks that should be easy
Author of require a lot of work. P
Pro WPF in C# 2008: The Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) changes all this by introduc- with
Windows Presentation ing a new model with entirely different plumbing. Although WPF includes the
Foundation with .NET 3.5 standard controls you’re familiar with, it draws every detail itself, using the F
Pro .NET 2.0 Windows high-performance DirectX engine. As a result, WPF can provide a whole host
Forms and Custom Controls of eye-popping new features, all of which we’ll cover in this book. For example,

in VB 2005 we’ll give common controls like buttons a slick, customized look without writing w VB 2008
The Book of Visual Basic a line of code. Similarly, we will craft animated effects that rotate, stretch, scale,
2005 and skew anything in your user interface right before the user’s eyes. Tasks that
would have been difficult or nearly impossible in Windows Forms—such as
Coauthor of i
playing media files or creating texture-mapped 3-D shapes—are finally possible. t
Pro ASP.NET 3.5 in C# 2008
By the time you’ve finished this book, you’ll have mastered these previously
(with Mario Szpuszta) h
tough tasks.
Although WPF’s video, animation, and 3-D features get the most hype, WPF

is just as useful for building business applications that don’t need rich graphics.
V
We’ll cover WPF’s enhancements of key business features such as data binding,
print management, and document display, giving you all you need to create
professional business applications in WPF. B
Windows Presentation Foundation with .NET 3.5
Welcome aboard!
Matthew MacDonald (Microsoft MVP, MCSD)
2
Companion eBook
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Matthew MacDonald
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962-4 FM.qxd 3/6/08 10:54 AM Page i
Pro WPF with VB 2008
Windows Presentation Foundation
with .NET 3.5
Matthew MacDonald
962-4 FM.qxd 3/6/08 10:54 AM Page ii
Pro WPF with VB 2008: Windows Presentation Foundation with .NET 3.5
Copyright © 2008 by Matthew MacDonald
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For my wonderful family,
Faria and Maya
962-4 FM.qxd 3/6/08 10:54 AM Page iv
Contents at a Glance
About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxiii
About the Technical Reviewer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxv
Acknowledgments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxvii
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxix
nCHAPTER 1 Introducing WPF. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
nCHAPTER 2 XAML . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
nCHAPTER 3 The Application. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
nCHAPTER 4 Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
nCHAPTER 5 Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
nCHAPTER 6 Dependency Properties and Routed Events. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
nCHAPTER 7 Classic Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
nCHAPTER 8 Windows. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
nCHAPTER 9 Pages and Navigation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
nCHAPTER 10 Commands. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
nCHAPTER 11 Resources. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
nCHAPTER 12 Styles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
nCHAPTER 13 Shapes,Transforms,and Brushes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
nCHAPTER 14 Geometries,Drawings,and Visuals. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417
nCHAPTER 15 Control Templates. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453
nCHAPTER 16 Data Binding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 499
nCHAPTER 17 Data Templates,Data Views,and Data Providers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 561
nCHAPTER 18 Lists,Trees,Toolbars,and Menus. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 609
nCHAPTER 19 Documents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 655
nCHAPTER 20 Printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 709
nCHAPTER 21 Animation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 741
nCHAPTER 22 Sound and Video . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 795
nCHAPTER 23 3-D Drawing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 821
iv
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nCHAPTER 24 Custom Elements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 867
nCHAPTER 25 Interacting with Windows Forms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 917
nCHAPTER 26 Multithreading and Add-Ins. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 941
nCHAPTER 27 ClickOnce Deployment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 979
nINDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 997
v
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Contents
About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxiii
About the Technical Reviewer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxv
Acknowledgments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxvii
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxix
nCHAPTER 1 Introducing WPF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Understanding Windows Graphics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
DirectX:The New Graphics Engine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Hardware Acceleration and WPF. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
WPF:A Higher-Level API . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Resolution Independence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
The Evolution of WPF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Windows Forms Lives On. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
DirectX Also Lives On . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Silverlight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
The Architecture of WPF. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
The Class Hierarchy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
The Last Word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
nCHAPTER 2 XAML. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Understanding XAML . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Graphical User Interfaces Before WPF. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
The Variants of XAML . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
XAML Compilation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
XAML Basics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
XAML Namespaces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
The Code-Behind Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Properties and Events in XAML. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Simple Properties and Type Converters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Complex Properties. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Markup Extensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Attached Properties. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Nesting Elements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
vii
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viii nCONTENTS
Special Characters and Whitespace. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
The Full Eight Ball Example. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Using Types from Other Namespaces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Loading and Compiling XAML. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Code-Only. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Code and Uncompiled XAML. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Code and Compiled XAML . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
XAML Only. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
The Last Word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
nCHAPTER 3 The Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
The Application Life Cycle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Creating an Application Object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Deriving a Custom Application Class. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Application Shutdown. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Application Events. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Application Tasks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Handling Command-Line Arguments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Accessing the Current Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Interacting Between Windows. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Single-Instance Applications. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
The Last Word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
nCHAPTER 4 Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Understanding Layout in WPF. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
The WPF Layout Philosophy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
The Layout Process. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
The Layout Containers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Simple Layout with the StackPanel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Layout Properties. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Alignment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Margin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Minimum,Maximum,and Explicit Sizes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
The WrapPanel and DockPanel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
The WrapPanel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
The DockPanel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Nesting Layout Containers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92