WPF Training at Orion

I have seen so many times Jim Mangaly giving nice presentations and trainings, when I was working in Identitymine.As a Software engg I never thought that I have to take WPF sessions.

But the earth didn't stop it's rotations.It became weeks,weeks became months and months became years.After 2 years I joined in Orion Inc and at a fine noon ,I was asked to present a WPF session.

Initially I was in big confusion "How to present the new features in WPF ?" It is very easy to work with.But very difficult to make others understand these new features.I had 1 hour left with me to prepare.It is not enough to prepare even about XAML.But I have to convey what is xaml.My audience is from .Net2.0 so finally I decided to present WPF features by relating the drawbacks of .Net 2.0 windows forms, and coresponding solutions in WPF.See some examples below.

• Windows forms developer has to get design(in some format like jpg) from designer and implement himself.This eats a good amount developer's precious time and the work is repetition.WPF has a solution which is called XAML to solve this problem.
• In Windows forms if someone needs to replace a digital clock control by analog clock he has to create a new control and override it's OnPaint method.But WPF provides a mechanism called templating which does this in a shorter time.
• Rotating a button in Windows forms is a 'Job'.But in WPF its a matter of 3 lines of code which specifies a RotateTransform.

Yes.This did the trick.At least they got some words like "XAML","Template","Transform","Styles" etc... which are going to make their life easier in the WPF world.The feedback was good and I decided to continue giving detailed sessions on WPF.2 sessions are over as of now and hope I can complete the other sessions soon...

Different styles for alternate rows in ListBox

Simple but important feature which really help us in real-time applications.Giving different look and feel or colors to alternate rows helps users to differentiate two consecutive rows in a ListBox or ListView.Basically controls which are derived from ItemsControl.

Below xaml code shows how alternate colors are applied into a ListBox

Xaml code to create ListBox with 6 items

<ListBox AlternationCount="2">

    <ListBoxItem Content="Item1" />

    <ListBoxItem Content="Item2" />

    <ListBoxItem Content="Item3" />

    <ListBoxItem Content="Item4" />

    <ListBoxItem Content="Item5" />

    <ListBoxItem Content="Item6" />

</ListBox>

Xaml code of the Style which has the alternate style support.Note the change is in the ItemContainerStyle.Here Style is applied to ListBoxItem

<Style  TargetType="{x:Type ListBoxItem}">

    <Style.Triggers>

        <Trigger Property="ItemsControl.AlternationIndex"

                 Value="0">

            <Setter Property="Background"

                    Value="LightBlue"></Setter>

        </Trigger>

        <Trigger Property="ItemsControl.AlternationIndex"

                 Value="1">

            <Setter Property="Background"

                    Value="LightGreen"></Setter>

        </Trigger>

    </Style.Triggers>

</Style>

When we run it shows as follows

Description

Here the ItemsControl has got most of the implementation part.It has some members which control the behavior of alternate style.The attached property ItemsControl.AlternationIndex tells the index and according to that we can change color or anything through style.

The Alternation count specifies the frequency.Below code uses 3 as ItemsControl.AlternationCount.See the difference.

Creating ListBox

<ListBox AlternationCount="3">

    <ListBoxItem Content="Item1" />

    <ListBoxItem Content="Item2" />

    <ListBoxItem Content="Item3" />

    <ListBoxItem Content="Item4" />

    <ListBoxItem Content="Item5" />

    <ListBoxItem Content="Item6" />

</ListBox>

Style supports AlternationCount=3

<Style  TargetType="{x:Type ListBoxItem}">

    <Style.Triggers>

        <Trigger Property="ItemsControl.AlternationIndex"

                 Value="0">

            <Setter Property="Background"

                    Value="LightBlue"></Setter>

        </Trigger>

        <Trigger Property="ItemsControl.AlternationIndex"

                 Value="1">

            <Setter Property="Background"

                    Value="LightGreen"></Setter>

        </Trigger>

        <Trigger Property="ItemsControl.AlternationIndex"

                 Value="2">

            <Setter Property="Background"

                    Value="LightYellow"></Setter>

        </Trigger>

    </Style.Triggers>

</Style>

I don't think a sample is needed.