Tools | 2,000 Things You Should Know About WPF

#724 – Sample Code for Examining Control Templates

January 1, 2013 Leave a comment

Charles Petzold, in his book Applications = Code + Markup, includes lots of useful sample code. In chapter 25, talking about templates, he presents source code for a DumpControlTemplate project. You can find the source code at http://www.microsoft.com/mspress/companion/0-7356-1957-3/. Download the code samples and then look for the DumpControlTemplate project under chapter 25.

You start by selecting a control from the Control menu.

Once you select a control, the application will render the control in the top half of the window. You can then select the template that you want to see from the Dump menu. For example, we can choose to see the control template for a Button.

After you select the desired template, the XAML for that template is displayed in the main window.

(Note that you can select text in this window, right-click and select Copy).

Filed under Miscellaneous Tagged with Miscellaneous, Templates, Tools, WPF

#721 – A Tool for Viewing the Clipboard

December 27, 2012 1 Comment

Here’s a handy free tool for viewing the contents of the clipboard – Clipboard Master, by Jumping Bytes Software.

Once installed, you can press the Windows Key + V combination and a Clipboard Master window will pop up, showing you the full contents of the clipboard and allowing you to select an item to paste. Notice that if there are multiple items on the clipboard, in different formats, you can choose which item to paste.

Filed under Miscellaneous Tagged with Clipboard, Miscellaneous, Tools, WPF

#511 – Blend Basics – The Tools Panel

March 9, 2012 1 Comment

When you start up Expression Blend, you’ll see a series of icons down the left side of the window. Each icon represents a tool that you can use to work with elements in your application. This area of the window is known as the Tools Panel.

This panel includes the following tools:

Selection and Direct Selection – Select objects
Pan – Slide the view in the artboard to see a different area of the GUI
Zoom – Zoom in/out on the artboard
Camera Orbit – Move the camera around in a 3D scene
Eyedropper and Paint Bucket – Copy attributes from one object to another
Gradient Tool – Create and edit gradient brushes
Pen – Draw and modify paths
Rectangle, Ellipse and Line – Draw a shape
Grid et al – Add a layout panel
TextBlock et al – Add a TextBox, Label or similar control
Button et al – Add a Button, CheckBox or similar control