Split Button in WPF

re: Split Button in WPF

Joe — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 00:28:24 GMT

I am having problems with the <mwt:ButtonChrome> tag. I added this:

xmlns:mwt="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Windows.Themes;assembly=PresentationFramework.Royale"

to the top but I still get an error that says:

The tag 'ButtonChrome' does not exist in XML namespace 'clr-namespace:Microsoft.Windows.Themes;assembly=PresentationFramework.Royale'.

Any thoughts?

re: Split Button in WPF

llester — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 02:26:13 GMT

check to see that you have the PresentationFramework.Royale dll referenced in the project....

re: Split Button in WPF

Andy Wilkinson — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 14:15:06 GMT

Thanks a lot for the idea Lester. The ContextMenu method works well, but what if you want a "real" context menu too? Well, I had a play around and posted a blog entry with an adapted version of this control at,

http://andyonwpf.blogspot.com/2006/10/dropdownbuttons-in-wpf.html

re: Split Button in WPF

llester — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 20:29:57 GMT

yeah the above does assume that you would not require a normal context menu... as a button doesnt normally provide that and it is also counter intuitive...

re: Split Button in WPF

Andy Wilkinson — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 21:52:53 GMT

Very good point. I can't think of any time I've seen a button with a context menu. In fact, if a button had some form on menu associated with it, I'd expect a split-button anyway.

Your solution also has the advantage that you don't even need to create a custom control, just a normal button with a context menu and your code in a Click handler in the Window class for example. This solution I feel is the best one if you are writing a UI and just want to add a split button to get the job done.

In my case I'm trying to in the end write a control library. In this situation, who am I to tell the user of the control how they should be using it? In fact in WPF this becomes more of an issue - after all, the control user can style it to look nothing like a button any longer. Maybe even a situation where a drop-down and a context menu are applicable. In this case I prefer my more flexible implementation.