Question

I want to implement a statusbar where i will be able to display messages for a specified period of time after which they will fadeout.

Can this be done with any ready made control in wpf? I can’t find such a functionality in StatusBar which as far as i understand is a container of other items.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

StatusBar is indeed only a container of other items.
I think there isn’t any built-in functionality like this.

But you can use a Timer to achieve what you want.

Make a method that sets the text message as the content of a StatusBarItem, set a time in the Timer and in the Timer.Elapsed event you remove the text from the StatusBarItem.

StatusBar XAML:

<StatusBar Height="25" Margin="5">
    <StatusBarItem x:Name="StatusMessage" />
</StatusBar>

Procedural code:

private void ShowStatusMessage(string message)
{
    StatusMessage.Content = message;
    var timer = new System.Timers.Timer();
    timer.Interval = 2000; //2 seconds
    timer.Elapsed += delegate(object sender, System.Timers.ElapsedEventArgs e)
    {
        //stop the timer
        timer.Stop();
        //remove the StatusMessage text using a dispatcher, because timer operates in another thread
        this.Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(new Action(() =>
        {
            StatusMessage.Content = "";
        }));
    };
    timer.Start();
}

If you want to animate you should look for DoubleAnimation