WPF Contrib

Project Description

WPF Contrib is a community-developed library of controls and utilities for WPF.

The goal is to create a stable, reusable library of classes that you can (and should) use in every WPF application you build.

What's New

The October 2008 release has been checked in and uploaded. There are a few notable changes:

• Requires .NET 3.5 (SP1 optional; required for some items such as Effects).
• Live demo XBAP (for features that do not require full trust): http://arbel.net/wpfcontrib/AvalonLibraryTestBrowser.xbap.
• Bragi's controls were removed, since he continued their development in his own library, available at http://jastdev.com/.
• New classes:
  • AnimatedTextBlock
  • GdiTextBlock (see http://arbel.net/blog/archive/2008/08/18/good-old-gdi-or-unblur-thy-text.aspx)
  • Bitmap (added to support GdiTextBlock. see http://blogs.msdn.com/dwayneneed/archive/2007/10/05/blurry-bitmaps.aspx)
  • Effects: BlendEffect and PointLightEffect (see http://arbel.net/blog/archive/2008/10/19/shady-pixels.aspx)
  • ValueConverter, a base class for value (and multi-value) converters, which is also a MarkupExtension.
  • EnumResourceTypeConverter
  • TypeExtension, a generics-enabled version of {x:Type} (see http://arbel.net/blog/archive/2008/10/27/activator-2-xaml-and-generics-day.aspx)
  • DropShadowBitmapEffectExtension and BlurBitmapEffectExtension Markup Extensions, which also catches the security exception raised when they are used in partial trust. This enables using them in an XBAP, for example.
• Many of the static helpers (Avalon.Windows.Utility) are now extension methods.
• Bug fixes and new features
• Breaking changes (important!)
• Security changes (important!)

What's in the Project

Released:

• Controls: NotifyIcon, ImageStrip, NineGridBorder
• Panels: AutoGrid, ColumnStackPanel
• Converters: DarkColorConverter, LightColorConverter, FormattedTextConverter
• Dialogs: FolderBrowserDialog, TaskDialog
• Utilities: BindingHelpers, ColorHelpers, DependencyHelpers, AnimationHelpers, UIHelpers
• Animation: Animation Framework
• Themes
• Demo project for most of the above.

Technical Stuff

• The CLR namspace for the library is Avalon.Windows. Kind of nostalgic.
• The namespace URI for XAML is currently "http://schemas.codeplex.com/wpfcontrib/xaml/presentation". Recommended prefix: "av".
• The project is built using VS 2008, and requires .NET 3.5 (as of October 2008). SP1 required for some controls.