Question

I am using the WPF toolkit and the WPF toolkit extended and notice that when I display a message box via:

MessageBox.Show("...");

I get the following…

I would like to make my main application window use this styling as well. Is there a way to do it?

EDIT: I’ve tried WindowStyle=”ToolWindow” and it doesn’t work.

Edit: In response to the answer below, please see picture below:

Also, I would like it to have a maximize and minimize button but with the same style as the button for close.

Thank you!

Answer 1

I want to add a disclaimer here that I threw this together pretty quickly out of curiosity, more than anything. I haven’t tested this much, other than dropping a few controls on there and running it. It works, but is shouldn’t be considered fully complete. I also think there are probably better ways to do this, but I figured this would at least give you a good starting place.

Add a new ResourceDictionary to your project, and add the following XAML:

<ResourceDictionary
  x:Class="CustomWindow.BaseResource"
  xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
  xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml">
  <Style x:Key="WindowStyle" TargetType="{x:Type Window}">
    <Setter Property="BorderThickness" Value="0" />
    <Setter Property="WindowStyle" Value="None" />
    <Setter Property="ResizeMode" Value="NoResize" />
    <Setter Property="Background" Value="White" />
    <Setter Property="Template">
      <Setter.Value>
        <ControlTemplate TargetType="{x:Type Window}">
          <Border
            x:Name="WindowBorder"
            BorderBrush="Black"
            BorderThickness="1">
            <Border.Background>
              <LinearGradientBrush StartPoint="0,0" EndPoint="0,1">
                <GradientStop Offset="0" Color="White" />
                <GradientStop Offset="1" Color="#FFDADADA" />
              </LinearGradientBrush>
            </Border.Background>
            <Grid
              Width="{TemplateBinding Width}"
              Height="{TemplateBinding Height}"
              MinWidth="{TemplateBinding MinWidth}"
              MinHeight="{TemplateBinding MinHeight}"
              HorizontalAlignment="Left"
              VerticalAlignment="Top"
              Cursor="Arrow">
              <Grid.RowDefinitions>
                <RowDefinition Height="25" />
                <RowDefinition Height="*" />
              </Grid.RowDefinitions>
              <TextBlock
                Width="500"
                Height="23"
                Margin="11,2,0,0"
                HorizontalAlignment="Left"
                VerticalAlignment="Top"
                Text="{TemplateBinding Title}" />
              <Rectangle
                x:Name="TitleBar"
                Fill="Transparent"
                MouseDown="TitleBar_MouseDown" />
              <Rectangle
                Grid.RowSpan="2"
                Width="10"
                HorizontalAlignment="Left"
                Cursor="SizeWE"
                Fill="Transparent"
                MouseDown="Border_MouseDown"
                Tag="Left" />
              <Rectangle
                Grid.RowSpan="2"
                Width="10"
                HorizontalAlignment="Right"
                Cursor="SizeWE"
                Fill="Transparent"
                MouseDown="Border_MouseDown"
                Tag="Right" />
              <Rectangle
                Height="5"
                VerticalAlignment="Top"
                Cursor="SizeNS"
                Fill="Transparent"
                MouseDown="Border_MouseDown"
                Tag="Top" />
              <Rectangle
                Grid.Row="1"
                Height="10"
                VerticalAlignment="Bottom"
                Cursor="SizeNS"
                Fill="Transparent"
                MouseDown="Border_MouseDown"
                Tag="Bottom" />
              <StackPanel
                Margin="10,0"
                HorizontalAlignment="Right"
                VerticalAlignment="Top"
                Orientation="Horizontal">
                <Button
                  x:Name="MinimizeButton"
                  Width="43"
                  Height="17"
                  Click="MinimizeButton_Click"
                  IsTabStop="False">
                  min
                </Button>
                <Button
                  x:Name="MaximizeButton"
                  Width="43"
                  Height="17"
                  Margin="5,0"
                  Click="MaximizeButton_Click"
                  IsTabStop="False">
                  max
                </Button>
                <Button
                  x:Name="CloseButton"
                  Width="43"
                  Height="17"
                  Click="CloseButton_Click"
                  IsTabStop="False">
                  <Path
                    Width="12"
                    Height="10"
                    HorizontalAlignment="Center"
                    VerticalAlignment="Center"
                    Data="M0.5,0.5L4.5178828,0.5 6.0620003,3.125 7.4936447,
                      0.5 11.5,0.5 11.5,1.5476431 8.7425003,6.1201854 11.5,
                      10.359666 11.5,11.5 7.4941902,11.5 6.0620003,8.8740005 
                      4.5172949,11.5 0.5,11.5 0.5,10.43379 3.3059995,
                      6.1201582 0.5,1.4676378 0.5,0.5z"
                    Fill="#E4FFFFFF"
                    Stretch="Fill"
                    Stroke="#FF535666" />
                </Button>
              </StackPanel>
              <Border
                Grid.Row="1"
                Margin="10,0,10,10"
                BorderBrush="Black"
                BorderThickness="1">
                <Grid>
                  <Rectangle Fill="White" />
                  <ContentPresenter Content="{TemplateBinding Content}" />
                </Grid>
              </Border>
            </Grid>
          </Border>
        </ControlTemplate>
      </Setter.Value>
    </Setter>
  </Style>
</ResourceDictionary>

For illustrative purposes, let’s say we named the ResourceDictionary, BaseResource.xaml.

Next add a new Class to the same directory where you added the resource, and name the file BaseResource.xaml.cs, substituting the actual name of your XAML file.

Go back to BaseResource.xaml and change the x:Class="CustomWindow.BaseResource" property to the full type name of the ResourceDictionary. If changed correctly, Visual Studio should complain that there is a duplicate definition in BaseResource.xaml.cs. Fix that by adding the partial keyword modifier to the class in the .cs file.

Finally, add the following code to the code file:

using System;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
using System.Windows;
using System.Windows.Input;
using System.Windows.Interop;
using System.Windows.Media;

namespace CustomWindow
{
    public partial class BaseResource
    {
        private const uint WM_SYSCOMMAND = 0x112;

        [DllImport("user32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto)]
        private static extern IntPtr 
            SendMessage(IntPtr hWnd, uint Msg, int wParam, int lParam);

        private void CloseButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            e.Handled = true;
            Window.GetWindow((DependencyObject) sender).Close();
        }

        private void MinimizeButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            e.Handled = true;
            Window.GetWindow((DependencyObject) sender).WindowState = WindowState.Minimized;
        }

        private void MaximizeButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            e.Handled = true;
            var window = Window.GetWindow((DependencyObject) sender);
            window.WindowState = 
              (window.WindowState == WindowState.Maximized) ? WindowState.Normal : WindowState.Maximized;
        }

        private void TitleBar_MouseDown(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e)
        {
            e.Handled = true;
            Window.GetWindow((DependencyObject) sender).DragMove();
        }

        private void Border_MouseDown(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e)
        {
            e.Handled = true;
            var direction = (Direction)Enum.Parse(typeof(Direction), ((FrameworkElement)sender).Tag.ToString());
            ResizeWindow(PresentationSource.FromVisual((Visual)sender) as HwndSource, direction);
        }

        private void ResizeWindow(HwndSource hwndSource, Direction direction)
        {
            SendMessage(hwndSource.Handle, WM_SYSCOMMAND, (int)(61440 + direction), 0);
        }

        private enum Direction
        {
            Left = 1,
            Right = 2,
            Top = 3,
            TopLeft = 4,
            TopRight = 5,
            Bottom = 6,
            BottomLeft = 7,
            BottomRight = 8,
        }
    }
}

Next add the ResourceDictionary to global Application resources. Again, substituting BaseResource.xaml with the name of your file, if it is different.

<Application.Resources>
    <ResourceDictionary>
        <ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
            <ResourceDictionary Source="/BaseResource.xaml" />
        </ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
    </ResourceDictionary>
</Application.Resources>

Add the style to the target Window.

<Window
  ...
  Style="{StaticResource WindowStyle}">

A few things…

The designer messes with the style when there is no content. It is probably because of where I placed the TemplateBinding for Height and Width, but it looks fine at runtime, so I didn’t mess with it further. I also didn’t implement the resize grip for the corners, but it is easy enough to add to the template.

Finally, I didn’t draw icons for the Minimize and Maximize buttons. I suck at creating Paths in Blend.

Hope it helps.