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To position a window manually on the screen in Window Presentation Foundation you can use these system properties Window.Left and Window.Top. To get the size of the screen you can use these system properties:

System.Windows.SystemParameters.PrimaryScreenWidth;
System.Windows.SystemParameters.PrimaryScreenHeight;

To set a window (the green one) position like the one shown at the image below, you can use this method:

private void SetWindowPosition()
{
    Left = SystemParameters.PrimaryScreenWidth - (double)GetValue(WidthProperty) - 30; ;
    Top = 150;
}

Tags: wpf

To night I spent hours trying to convert from a SVG file to XAML. The reason for wanting to do the converting, is that I want a vector based image in a WPF application I’m currently developing. Using a vector based image will scale much better than using a bitmap image.

The solution

I first downloaded a vector based image from this url: http://iconeden.com/icon/free/get/milky-a-free-vector-iconset
Inside the zip file you will find a SVG file. You can open this file using Adobe Illustrator, but I prefer using free alternatives, so I downloaded Inkscape. Inkscape is a open source vector graphics editor. I opened the file, and it contained several images. I wanted one of them; a clock. I copied and pasted the image into a new instance of Inkscape. If you choose Save as from the file menu in Inkscape, you will notice that I gives you the option to save as XAML. I tried doing that without success. It turned out that the XAML produced by Inkscape is not valid when opening it in Expression Blend or Visual Studio. So I saved the file as Clock.svg

On Codeplex there’s a project called XamlTune. I downloaded it and used the command prompt tool called svg2xaml.exe found in the package. The output from this small application were a XAML file called Clock.xaml. I opened this file in Visual Studio and guess what? It worked. The image were converted from SVG to XAML without any errors.

If you need to convert from SVG to XAML, I recommend that you look at this tool. I have only used it a few time, but it looks good so fare.

Tags: wpf

This last mount I have been around cities in Norway giving a presentation called ‘WPF Done Right’. This is in relation to Microsofts MSDN Live tour where they go to 4 large cities in Norway with presentations about new and upcoming technologies. The presentation I’m giving is about Composite Application Guidance. You may know it as Prism because this was the codename they used when they started developing this guidance. It’s important to distinguish Prism from Composite Application Block. Prism equals freedom. You can do whatever you want with this framework/guidelines. If you want to use something else than what comes out-of-the-box, you can. A god example of this is Unity. Unity is a IOC container made by Microsoft. If you don’t want to use it, you don’t have to. You can switch to Autofact or Windsor. It’s up to you. In CAB you have to follow all the rules that the CAB team have decided. CAB equals not so much freedom.

I’m really excited about this framework and I love working with it. I will definitely write posts about this framework in the future. 
The picture below is from the presentation in Trondheim.

Rune Grothaug at Microsoft took some pictures from the event in Trondheim. You can view them here.

I’m giving this presentation together with Kjetil Klaussen, a friend and colleague from Acando.

Tags: presentation, wpf

This is mostly a note to myself on how to create an attached property in WPF using a ComboBox.

public class SelectionBehavior
{
    public static DependencyProperty SelectionChangedProperty =
            DependencyProperty.RegisterAttached("SelectionChanged",
            typeof(ICommand),
            typeof(SelectionBehavior),
            new UIPropertyMetadata(SelectionBehavior.SelectedItemChanged));
    public static void SetSelectionChanged(DependencyObject target, ICommand value)
    {
        target.SetValue(SelectionBehavior.SelectionChangedProperty, value);
    }
    private static void SelectedItemChanged(DependencyObject target, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e)
    {
        Selector element = target as Selector;
        if (element == null) throw new InvalidOperationException("This behavior can be attached to Selector item only.");
        if ((e.NewValue != null) && (e.OldValue == null))
        {
            element.SelectionChanged += SelectionChanged;
        }
        else if ((e.NewValue == null) && (e.OldValue != null))
        {
            element.SelectionChanged -= SelectionChanged;
        }
    }
    private static void SelectionChanged(object sender, System.Windows.Controls.SelectionChangedEventArgs e)
    {
        UIElement element = (UIElement)sender;
        ICommand command = (ICommand)element.GetValue(SelectionBehavior.SelectionChangedProperty);
        command.Execute(((Selector) sender).SelectedValue);
    }
}

And in the XAML file add

<ComboBox local:SelectionBehavior.SelectionChanged="{Binding MyCommand}"  
              ItemsSource="{Binding MySource}"
              Name="MyComboBox"/> 

MyCommand can be a DelegateCommand from CAG.

Tags: wpf