WPF Themes

Hello.

I have just downloaded the WPF Elements trial. What I want to do for starters is simply use the free themes. Whether or not I will purchase any of your products I do not know at this time.

Could you give me some kind of clue exactly what I need to do? I moved the xaml theme files into a Themes folder in my project and added < ms:OfficeBlue /> into my app.xaml. Do I need an assembly reference or something to get this going?

Thanks, G Shields

Hi,

Thanks for checking out WPF Elements. To get the themes working, move them back into the original install directory (defaults to C:\Program Files (x86)\Mindscape\WPF Elements\Themes) - the library loads them automatically without you having to add them to your project. You've got the gist of the rest of it - if you haven't already done so, just add Mindscape\WpfElements\Bin\Mindscape.WpfElements.dll as a reference (and the design assembly if you want).

Once you've added the theme to your app.xaml's resource dictionary, it should work:

<Application.Resources>
  <ResourceDictionary>
    <ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
      <ms:OfficeBlue/>
    </ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
  </ResourceDictionary>
</Application.Resources>

Let us know if you've got any more questions. Also, it's not a biggie, but the specialized WPF Elements forum is over here: http://www.mindscapehq.com/forums/forum/15. Feel free to post in there, you're guaranteed we'll see it :)

Wow, you're a very nice guy compared to the apathy and arrogance I'm used to from certain other companies. Also, when I looked at your Dashboard Sample app, I was very impressed and knew that I was looking at the product of great coordinated intelligence. I've got a lot to learn, and it seems to me that even the structure of your sample applications can be a great learning experience, although I'm sure it may not always be obvious how you got something to be the way that it is.

Anyway, I will attempt to do as you say and see how it goes. My concerns now are how much bloat will be added to my application (I suppose just the two-some-odd megs which is the size of the .dll, and then the .xaml files), whether I'm going to have some sort of time-out at some point because of the .dll (though the themes are said to be free), and how this stuff all gets put into a package for distribution of my application.

Thanks for your help, and I'll try to keep in mind that I should propound future inquiries to the WPF Elements forum.

G. Shields

Oh, one other thing: You mentioned the design assembly. Could you describe the functionality of that for me a bit or refer me to a reference source where I can read about it?

Thanks, G. Shields

Sorry... Wanted to also get clarification on the difference between the design assembly that has ".10" and the one that doesn't.

Thanks, G.S.

Okay, so I guess I got it working...but it seems like I'm getting minimal styling. There's no styling of the window background. Also, the whole reason I've been investigating this was for styling the datagrid, and I get no styling of it either for some reason.

Firstly, you're correct about the added file size - a few MB's depending on what themes are used. We tend to find this worth it considering the time saved when using the controls and themes, but this will of course be something you'll have to weigh up based on your project's requirements.

Also note that .xaml files are compiled down to binary versions (.baml). These are much smaller - just a few kilobytes. These reside in your project's obj directory, and include the theme you merge in - for instance if you add the above as a merged dictionary inside your app.xaml's resource dictionary, the resulting app.baml file in your obj directory will include the compiled theme merged inside it. Your project's bin directory will include the Mindscape.WpfElements.dll library as standard.

With the trial version there is indeed a time-out (of 60 days) but this applies to the trial controls only. This time-out doesn't apply to the AutoComplete TextBox, the Coverflow control and the Prompt Decorator control or the five themes - these are all free to use forever.

About the design assemblies - these are for supporting design time functionality (dragging Mindscape controls from the toolbox onto a page's design view, in the visual way). One correction, though - these are imported automatically by the main assembly, you don't need to manually add them as a project reference. The Design.10.dll version is needed for Visual Studio 2010, while 2008 uses the other one, but this is all taken care for you.

For the styling, we leave the window background color up to you - you'll need to set the Background manually on your root element. And finally if you are referring to the Microsoft WPF Data Grid, we don't have custom styling for this control. You'll see some being applied to visuals like buttons, so that may be the minimal styling you are seeing.

The reason we don't style the MS Data Grid as we have our own Data Grid control in WPF Elements - we're pretty proud of this, both feature and performance-wise (there's some powerful virtualization going on in there to keep the user experience snappy) - it was built in response to Microsoft's offering. We think ours is easier to get up and running, has more features, faster performance, better support and of course it looks great with the 5 themes included. Give it a go and see if it suits your needs - if there's a particular feature or use case you need to support we're happy to help you get it working.