Skip to content

XAML

How Do I Wrap Text (or Add TextEllipsis) In The ComboBox?

I’ve been spending the past several days fighting with the ComboBox in an attempt to make it so something very simple: Wrap text inside the combo box. I’ve finally figured it out, so I thought I’d share.

OK, first of all, make sure that your ComboBox is hooked up to something, even if that something is some random RSS feed. I have a post that can help you with that over here. Bind your comboBox to the “Items” part of the New York Times RSS feed.

You need to do this because, if you do not, you will have to set the same data template to every single ComboBoxItem that you add to the ComboBox. And that’s just no fun.

Starting out, your ComboBox should look something like this:

ComboBoxDefault

Right click on your ComboBox and select “Edit Other Templates -> Edit Generated Items (ItemTemplate)-> Create Empty…” Give your new data template a name and Blend will take you into the Data Template design.

Read More »How Do I Wrap Text (or Add TextEllipsis) In The ComboBox?

How Do I Wrap Text in a ListView Header?

OK, it’s really late and I want to get this done, so we’re going to go through the easy way, which will require some XAML, but I’ll try to keep it as Blend-y as possible.

So you have a column header and you want the text inside to wrap when the header space gets too short for the content. Your header probably looks something like this:

OriginalHeader

First, go to wherever your resources are being held and type the following in:

<Style x:Key=”CustomHeaderStyle” TargetType=”{x:Type GridViewColumnHeader}“>
</Style>

Read More »How Do I Wrap Text in a ListView Header?

WPF Wii Multi-Point Tutorials, Part 2: Writing a Code-less Wiimote Program

 OK, I hope no one is using my last post as an example of what you should be doing when interfacing the Wiimote with WPF. Because it was completely hack-tastic.

 Instead, use my new WPF/Wii library. It uses the WPF INotifyPropertyChanged interface to act as an interface so that we can bind the Wiimote data directly to the XAML. More on that in a little bit, but first…

In this post, we’ll walk through creating a basic multi-point capable app that uses the Wiimote as an input device. What is really unique about this post is the fact that we’re going to do this in a way that requires absolutely no code whatsoever on your part.

That’s right. No code. At all. Zero knowledge of C# required.

Read More »WPF Wii Multi-Point Tutorials, Part 2: Writing a Code-less Wiimote Program

Embedded ListView Columns (Columns Within Columns)

Please Read: Strangely, when you do a Google search for “wpf” and “listview”, this is one of the top links. This is odd because this particular post is kind of an advanced tutorial. If you’re looking for more general information on styling the wpf listview, check out this post. It is probably much closer to what you’re looking for.

This is a bit of an advanced tutorial. I’m putting it up because I just figured out how to do it and I want to share. You can also download the project files for this tutorial (in zip format… requires .Net 3.5).

Recently, I received from my user experience designers a wireframe that looked something like this:

EmbeddedWireframe

As you can see, there are embedded categories (categories within categories) here. I considered many solutions (hacks), but I found that a deeper understanding of the ListView and how it works would allow me to resolve this issue very simply (and without even touching the code behind).Read More »Embedded ListView Columns (Columns Within Columns)

Styling the ListView Column Header

ListView header Styling is one of the most difficult styling pieces I’ve had to deal with. Part of this is because it is just another part of the seemingly endlessly complex listview. The other part is just because of the way the styling for the listview is put together in WPF.

In this post, we’re going to change the default color of the header (background and foreground) and make the headers look more like bubbles. Why? Because we can! (Everytime I say that, somewhere a usability expert loses a little bit of their soul.)

Take note that anything done in this will affect the whole header. If you’re looking to do something to one individual column in the header, you need to go to this post on ColumnHeaders (coming soon). See the bottom of this post for more details.

As a point of note, the easy way in this particular case involves going directly into the XAML and the hard way involves going through the steps in Blend. The easy way is posted at the bottom.

Now for the hard way. First, go to your listview, right click on it and go to:

Edit Control Parts (Template) -> Edit a Copy…

1_ControlParts
Read More »Styling the ListView Column Header

Ellipsis and TextWrapping in a ListView Column

In response to the questions:

How do I make it so that, instead of cutting off the text in my column when I shorten it, my text displays ellipsis?

and

How do I make it so that my text wraps when I shorten my columns?

I’ll deal with the first one first and the second one… second.

That sounded better in my head than it looks on the screen.

With the first question… when a column is shortened, this is what normally happens:

CellTemplate Default Text

And, instead, we want this to happen: 

CellTemplate Ellipss

Read More »Ellipsis and TextWrapping in a ListView Column