If I am correct in interpreting your message, you want something that works similar to what
Billy Hollis demonstrates in his StaffLynx application.
I recently built a similar control and it turns out that this sort of idea is relatively simple to implement in WPF. I created a custom control called DialogPresenter. In the control template for the custom control, I added markup similar to the following:
<ControlTemplate TargetType="{x:Type local=DialogPresenter}">
<Grid>
<ContentControl>
<ContentPresenter />
</ContentControl>
<!-- The Rectangle is what simulates the modality -->
<Rectangle x:Name="Overlay" Visibility="Collapsed" Opacity="0.4" Fill="LightGrey" />
<Grid x:Name="Dialog" Visibility="Collapsed">
<!-- The template for the dialog goes here (borders and such...) -->
<ContentPresenter x:Name="PART_DialogView" />
</Grid>
</Grid>
<ControlTemplate.Triggers>
<!-- Triggers to change the visibility of the PART_DialogView and Overlay -->
</ControlTemplate.Triggers>
</ControlTemplate>
I also added a Show(Control view)
method, which finds the the ‘PART_DialogView’, and adds the passed in view to the Content
property.
This then allows me to use the DialogPresenter
as follows:
<controls:DialogPresenter x:Name="DialogPresenter">
<!-- Normal parent view content here -->
<TextBlock>Hello World</TextBlock>
<Button>Click Me!</Button>
</controls:DialogPresenter>
To the buttons event handler (or bound command), I simply call the Show() method of the DialogPresenter
.
You can also easily add ScaleTransform markup to the DialogPresenter template to get scaling effects shown in the video. This solution has neat and tidy custom control code, and a very simple interface for your UI programming team.
Hope this helps!