Question

I want to add the menubar to TextBox control in Silverlight 4. (I will create a new reusable control.) The menubar will consists of a few image buttons. The idea is that it will normally stay hidden and will show up only when the user puts his/her mouse cursor to the TextBox area. If used in a multiline textbox, whole menubar can fit inside it, this should be easy. (I hope. :-))

But how to solve situation when TextBox is in single line mode? I’d like to put the menubar above the TextBox. But I don’t have a clue how to do it. Can somebody help? I need to let all other controls in a form to stay in their positions, and only add my menubar above my textbox. (So the menubar will NOT hide the textbox. Instead, it will hide other controls residing right above the textbox.) It should work in all arrangements of form, like Grid, StackPanel, Canvas etc. In the fact it would be similar to a classic right-click context menu, but not modal. (Right-click context menu is modal, i.e. while it is shown you cannot use other controls, and it automatically hides when you click anywhere else. I want my menubar to stay visible as long as user heeps mouse cursor over the textbox or the menubar.)

Example: Coordinates of textbox are top=100,left=20,bottom=115,right=120. So my menubar’s coordinates should be bottom=100,left=20, right & top are based on size of menubar.

If many textboxes will be used on a single page, each single one should have its own menubar. (Of course.)

Answer 1

You can create your own control (custom control or UserControl, whichever you like should work) which has the TextBox, and the visual for the menu bar.

If the TextBox is single-line, you could display the menu bar in a Popup which you position just above the TextBox whenever the mouse is over it.

If the TextBox is multi-line, you’d simply use a StackPanel or Grid or whatever to do layout like normal, if I am understanding what you want.