Question

I’m working on a Windwos Phone 7 project, where I would like to have a native messagebox, like the simple MessageBox.Show( ) function, only where I can add a few buttons, like “yes” and “no”. Everything I found thus far uses an open-source solution, such as custom Message Box. Is there nothing native to WP7 like this?

Answer 1

Sadly not. The standard MessageBox only allows for a very limited set of pre-defined button combinations. If you want to roll your own, the Popup control can be configured to look like the inbuilt MessageBox control, but with the option to display whatever you like inside it.

(Quick and dirty example)

<Popup Name="RateAnswerPopup" IsOpen="false" Margin="0" >
    <StackPanel Margin="0" Background="#bb000000" Width="480" Height="800">
        <StackPanel HorizontalAlignment="Center" Margin="0" Background="{StaticResource PhoneChromeBrush}" Width="456" >
            <TextBlock TextWrapping="Wrap" Style="{StaticResource PhoneTextTitle3Style}">Is this useful?</TextBlock>
            <TextBlock TextWrapping="Wrap" Style="{StaticResource PhoneTextNormalStyle}">Please take a moment to let me know if this was any use to you.</TextBlock>
            <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal" HorizontalAlignment="Center" Margin="12,12,12,0">
                <Button Content="yes" Name="PopupYes" />
                <Button Content="no" Name="PopupNo" />
                <Button Content="maybe" Name="PopupMaybe" />
            </StackPanel>
            <CheckBox HorizontalAlignment="Center" Name="DontAskAgainCheck" >Don't ask me again</CheckBox>
        </StackPanel>
    </StackPanel>
</Popup>

You may want to add some haptic feedback when you set RateAnswerPopup.IsOpen=true; as a cue that the box has appeared, but that’s up to you.