2,000 Things You Should Know About WPF

#826 – Lower-Level Elements Can Have Different Cursor

A Cursor set on a top-level FrameworkElement will also be used on all elements within the parent element’s logical tree.  All lower-level elements will show the same cursor when the user hovers over the element.

You can, however, set a Cursor on a top-level element and then set a different value for Cursor on the lower-level element.  The top-level Cursor will be used for all descendants of the top-level element except for the one that explicitly sets a different cursor.

    <StackPanel Cursor="Hand">
        <Label Content="Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit"
               Margin="5"
               Background="LightCoral"/>
        <Label Content="Noli habere bovis, vir"
               Margin="5"
               Background="DarkSeaGreen"/>
        <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal"
                    HorizontalAlignment="Center">
            <Button Content="Veni, Vidi"
                    Padding="10,5" Margin="10"/>
            <Button Content="Dormivi"
                    Cursor="Wait"
                    Padding="10,5" Margin="10"/>
        </StackPanel>
    </StackPanel>

#824 – Setting a Cursor on a Top Level Element

When you set the Cursor property on a FrameworkElement, the cursor is displayed whenever you move the mouse pointer over that element.  This Cursor value will also apply to all descendants of the element.

In the example below, when we set the Cursor in the top-level Window, that cursor is used for all elements contained in the window.

Layout, within the Window:

    <StackPanel>
        <Label Content="Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit"
               Margin="5"
               Background="LightCoral"/>
        <Label Content="Noli habere bovis, vir"
               Margin="5"
               Background="DarkSeaGreen"/>
        <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal"
                    HorizontalAlignment="Center">
            <Button Content="Veni, Vidi"
                    Padding="10,5" Margin="10"
                    Click="btnClick_Wait"/>
            <Button Content="Dormivi"
                    Padding="10,5" Margin="10"
                    Click="btnClick_StopWaiting"/>
        </StackPanel>
    </StackPanel>

Code-behind:

    public partial class MainWindow : Window
    {
        public MainWindow()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
        }

        private void btnClick_Wait(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            this.Cursor = Cursors.AppStarting;
        }

        private void btnClick_StopWaiting(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            this.Cursor = Cursors.Arrow;
        }
    }

#823 – Setting a Cursor from XAML

Every FrameworkElement has a Cursor property that you can set to an instance of a System.Windows.Input.Cursor object.  Typically, you’ll just set the property to one of the predefined cursors in the System.Windows.Input.Cursors class.

When you set the Cursor property on an element, you’re indicating which cursor should appear when a user moves the mouse over that element.

You can set the Cursor property in XAML or in code.  In either case, you can pick from one of the predefined cursors in System.Windows.Input.Cursors.  In the image below, Intellisense in Visual Studio shows a list of the available cursors when setting the Cursor property from XAML.

In the example below, we indicate that we want the Wait cursor displayed whenever we hover over the second label.

    <StackPanel>
        <Label Content="I'm just a label, you know?"
               Margin="5"
               Background="LightCoral"/>
        <Label Content="I'm waiting and waiting"
               Margin="5"
               Background="DarkSeaGreen"
               Cursor="Wait"/>
    </StackPanel>