Question

I would like to have the standard silverlightcombobox behave like an html combobox.
So let’s say I have a combobox for all states in the US, If I press the ‘I’ key, it should navigate the selected item to start at the I’s … Is there anyway to do this, it doesn’t make sense that it’s not built in functionality.

Maybe I missed the memo? Any ideas?

Answer 1

It’s not something that comes as standard – even in Silverlight 4 (I hit this very problem today).

However, there are quite a few DIY implementations on the net:

http://gistom.blogspot.com/2009/12/silverlight-combobox-with-keyboard.html

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/silverlight/ComboBoxKeyBrdSelection.aspx

http://www.reflectionit.nl/Blog/PermaLinkd137c1f7-a515-4084-8199-f8b3cf892b8f.aspx

The author of the last post

created a small Behavior which fixes this problem. You can attach the KeyboardSelectionBehavior to a ListBox or ComboBox using Microsoft Expression Blend. You drag it from the Assets and drop it on your ComboBox or ListBox. If you have a custom ItemTemplate you will have to set the SelectionMemberPath property.

If you don’t have access to Blend then just use the code as a template and edit the XAML by hand to produce the same result.