CLR Add-In Team Blog

I have been using this technique for a while now - it works just fine. I was amazed when I first tried it that "it just worked".

The only difficulty I've had has to do with general performance -- but that isn't unique to WinForms.

At any rate, if anyone is wondering, just stick your WinForms control in a WPF win form hosting control and you are off to the races.

Hi.

I'm gonna implement plugins for my WinForms application. Plugins will contains GUI. I wanna have ability to write GUI for plugin with WinForms, WPF and maybe GTK#. Which is the best way to do it with .NET 3.5?

Guys, I don't know if you are aware of it but all the samples download links are broken.

for example:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb913903.aspx

Look at my forum entry:

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2597659&SiteID=1

Can you help?

We just posted a solution to consider for the F.A.Q. of how to enable isolatable WinForms applications.

I posted a straight-forward example solution for integrating Windows Controls using CLR Add-ins.

This example uses VS2005 and, other than the add-in pipeline itself, it is, from the perspective of the host and add-in developer, a *pure* Windows Forms experience.

http://softwaregreenhouses.com/blog/2008/01/13/part-ii-windows-controls-extensibility-with-net-35-clr-add-ins-using-wpf-and-crossbow/

-- Marty Nelson

Jack/Jesse,

Just reading the MSDN documentation on WPF add-ins, it says -

"Due to limitations with application domains, unhandled exceptions that are thrown in add-in application domains cause the entire application to crash, even though the isolation boundary exists. However, WPF and the .NET Framework add-in model provide a simple way to work around this problem and improve application stability. A WPF add-in that displays a UI creates a Dispatcher for the thread that the application domain runs on, if the host application is a WPF application. You can detect all unhandled exceptions that occur in the application domain by handling the UnhandledException event of the WPF add-in's Dispatcher. You can get the Dispatcher from the CurrentDispatcher property."

I have not however been able to get this to work? Is the documentation incorrect, or if it is correct, is there a sample you have showing this capability?

Regards,

Ian

Does someone have an example of a MDI parent host loading add-ins at runtime that show MDI children UI? My understanding is that forms (not user controls) *can* be utilized in the new System.AddIn framework but only via WPF. Does anyone have an easy-to-follow example of this in action?

Thanks,

Eric

If you want to use WinForms without having the overhead of WPF there is actually a third option.

Create an addin that will serve as the main application hosting your MDI form or whatever. When activating addins with user controls, make sure to activate them in the same appdomain as the main addin. This way, remoting of Control classes is avoided completely.

The downside here of course is that we loose appdomain isolation between the main gui and addin gui. The good thing is that we keep isolation between GUI stuff and the host process and also gain some performance with not having to remote between UI elements.

I have successfully used this technique and will, when time permits, write an article about it.

Hi,

I'm recently trying to build a PowerPoint COM Add-In which can support our activities at Porsche.

I'm able -based on available samples on the internet- to create a button on the standard bar and trigger my form to show up. Though this is just the beginning and I'm already stuck.

What I need to do is database (Access or XML) connections and based on the data gathered, add task boxes to the slide.

Are there any samples which would guide me?

Thanks,

Kaan