Want some WPF improvements/features: Tell us

Artikkeli
01/30/2008

The WPF platform is powerful but relatively new. We realize that some things are lacking and we are in listening mode. If you feel that we need to improve or add something, send me a comment. We'll make sure you are heard. :)

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Anonymous
January 30, 2008
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 30, 2008
DataGrid, DataGrid, DataGrid!!!
Anonymous
January 30, 2008
Personally, I've been pushing for support of blend modes from the beginning. http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1001946
Anonymous
January 30, 2008
I'm totally agree with Basile. We need more built in controls. Maybe a little bit more control over controls hierarchy is welcome (something like public methods to add and remove logical childs, not only protected internal).
Anonymous
January 30, 2008
More performance for 2D or 3D gimmicks and off curse controls like the normal WindowsForms controls.
Anonymous
January 30, 2008
allow us to set properties from other threads without needing to use Dispatcher.BeginInvoke
Anonymous
January 30, 2008
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 30, 2008
How about having more hardware-accelerated effect, like the blur thingy?
Anonymous
January 30, 2008
1.) ability to create custom bitmap effects as pixel shaders 2.) gradient meshes
Anonymous
January 30, 2008
Can we get some examples from the WPF Team for control designers. Specifically, which control designer attributes are honored by VS2008 and Blend. Which attributes to use with which property Type. Thank you for asking! Karl
Anonymous
January 30, 2008
I know it's been worked on, but the blurry text issue for size 14 fonts and below has to be resolved before any company will use it in LOB applications
Anonymous
January 30, 2008
DataGrid and visual studio style tabbed-mdi control
Anonymous
January 30, 2008
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Anonymous
January 30, 2008
Accelerate Animations with BitmapEffects. Virtualizing listbox templated with WrapPanel Better access to auto generated FrameworkElements.
Anonymous
January 30, 2008

Faster cold startup. It is really hard to make a customer accept that even the smallest LOB application will require > 10 seconds to start on an otherwise fast computer.
Access to a fast 32-bit array of pixels for doing graphical effects

Anonymous
January 30, 2008
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 30, 2008
Oh yeah:

Built-in Undo/Redo for commanding.

Anonymous
January 30, 2008
Last time I checked, I couldn't find a WPF TreeView control that supports multi-select... it'd be very nice to have one
Anonymous
January 30, 2008
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 30, 2008
More text antialiasing options (none/gray scale/different modes of cleartype). Get rid of blurry text effect while scrolling/animating content. VS designer property grid improvements (more property editors). Enhance Expression Blend to make it ready for the industry (fully-functional code editor, IntelliSense in code/XAML, work with events without VS, classic white UI style (VS-like) without blurry text).
Anonymous
January 30, 2008
Let the Frame control render html from a string. The Frame control is based around the webbrowser control so it should be possible.
Anonymous
January 30, 2008
My company would love to adopt WPF for our statistical/scientific visualization application, but the retained-mode-only nature of WPF makes it impossible. Retained mode is great for a snazzy UI with a few hundred objects. We render arrays of graphs which together contain more than a million points/markers. No retained-mode system can handle that - memory usage skyrockets. If WPF is ever to deprecate GDI (and heaven knows it needs to), it must have immediate-mode support, somehow. There are classes of applications that simply will never be brought to a retained-mode-only system. Please save us from GDI by adding immediate-mode support to WPF.
Anonymous
January 30, 2008
Allow to set the readonly / disabled color from the style. I don't want to edit the control template to change colors.
Anonymous
January 30, 2008
There's a few good things here: http://rrelyea.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!167AD7A5AB58D5FE!698.entry And on my web site: http://www.wiredprairie.us/journal/2006/10/wpf_lob_feedback.html
Anonymous
January 30, 2008
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 30, 2008
You've been kicked (a good thing) - Trackback from DotNetKicks.com
Anonymous
January 30, 2008
a comparable construct in C# to match VB's With...End With statement so it's super easy to set WPF attributes in code rather than XAML markup. In case you're going to ask what's wrong with XAML: it can't easily be obfuscated; business UI's don't need to be designer skinnable therefore it's pointless for many scenarios; it's more to learn; it's not easy for designers to hand edit anyway (if they need Blend to edit it, might just as well be a binary format).
Anonymous
January 30, 2008
Make xaml a first class citizen in VS: * Allow refactoring to include xaml code * Allow "find symbols" to include xaml code * improve navigation into xaml and away from xaml into code behind
Improve XBAP platform: * Revisit security and remove restrictions where they are not warranted (e.g. XPS, printing, clipboard) * Fix navigation bugs * Allow more control over forward/back-stacks (e.g. allow me to remove items from backstack) * Allow me to stop the user from navigating away from XBAP (e.g. when the user forgot he/she was in the middle of editing data on one of my XBAP pages) * Support modal dialogs (or allow me to create my own)
Allow us to control the look of Windows dialogs (open file, show message, print, etc.)
Reporting engine
Increase support for generics in xaml
Improve Cider and Blend
Anonymous
January 30, 2008

Better support for linq to sql namely the ability for additions and deletions to child entity to reflect in the ui.
Make it easier to access controls inside of datatemplate to set properties on those controls in the code behind.

Anonymous
January 30, 2008
http://weblogs.asp.net/okloeten/archive/2007/12/22/5489157.aspx
Anonymous
January 30, 2008
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 30, 2008
Anything you can do to simplify using converters in databinding would be much appreciated. It's messy! For instance, why do you need to instance a converter?
Anonymous
January 30, 2008
Better multimedia integration. I would like to see DirectShow capture supported. Allow us to use shaders. Better Direct3D/XNA integration. Would be great not to have airspace issues with WPF/D3D/MDX. Accelerate GFX if we have multicore. Two cores is becoming the norm, seems a pity to not use them to their fullest.
Anonymous
January 30, 2008
Since I see suggestions diverging from core WPF, I'll throw in another related suggestion: Impove Expression Blend and Visual Studio. I gave up on a WPF project last year because the XAML editors were too cumbersome, slow, and buggy. Creating and working with a highly layed UI in Expression Blend was extremely tedious. The IDE is too slow, and I quickly came to loath it. Switching to Visual Studio was no better since it could even render the XAML or would mistake valid code for errors. You should concentrate on making the design experience more easier and pleasant. Don't let your IDEs become a barrier of entry to WPF. One quick UX improvement which comes to mind is to provide a 2.5D view of the layers so that they are easier to work with...
Anonymous
January 30, 2008

Reiterating what others said on more new controls and more polished and functional existing controls
Enhanced triggers and setters, especially regarding source, target and property path specifications. Different types of triggers allowed in one context and not in another are confusing.
More extensions and built-in converters that don't force the developer to use code-behind for things that are trivial.

Anonymous
January 30, 2008
I would like a much better educational drive (not just US!). It takes forever to accomplish some basic templating just from a point of trying to figure out what to do and how the things work together. I do think it is a powerful and exiting platform but if people don't know how to utilize it to its full potential it wont be as readily adopted! And yes controls :)
Anonymous
January 30, 2008
Yup, all of the above ! :-) But since I'm mostly using 3D in WPF I want S H A D E R support, or at least (as some other guys have suggested) a closer integration with Direct3D. Alternatively (maybe more in alignment with WPF's philosphy) you could offer more advanced materials by way of a fixed built-in set of (configurable) predefined shaders (e.g. glass, metal, plastic) What's also hurting me big-time is the lack of a decent designer (please don't even mention cider). I've become accustomed to hand-coding XAML but I'm always glad to be able to get back to the winforms designer when working on the "LOB" screens of our CAD-oriented application.
Anonymous
January 30, 2008
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 30, 2008
Please add multi-select capability to the TreeView control. This might not seem useful for the default style, but don't forget about restyling scenarios! As a part of the core WPF library, I'm surprised it can't already do this. Also please make it possible to programmatically select a TreeView's item(s).
Anonymous
January 30, 2008

autocomplete with filtered list in combobox like old winforms combobox
autocomplete in TextBox
Office Ribbon
MdiTabs like in Expression or visual studio

Anonymous
January 30, 2008
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Anonymous
January 30, 2008
Improve performances :

Some cool effects that are used in demos are not usable in real applications ( Bitmap effects etc. )
Virtualizing in ListView with grouping : another cool feature that is not usable in real life application ( applications with more than 50 items in the list !! )
GridViewRowPresenter with virtualization enabled ( add 50 columns in a listview and see what i mean )
the defalut cell margin in GridViewRowPresenter should be "stylable"
search wpf forums for performance issues and try to improve things
xps generation should need less memory ( search for FlowDocument memory leaks ... ) Will it be possible to create graphical objects ( ex: Grid or Label ) and to use them in a backgroundworker as long as they are not displayed ? ( and without the need to BeginInvoke !) Improve tools : VS2008 wpf designer is slow and buggy. XAML editor is buggy and need the same functions than the code editor ( refactoring ... ) Conclusion : i don't need new controls ( i can make them myself quite quickly ) but i need a serious platform : fast even in real situations. When the same application need 10x memory in wpf than in winforms and is slower, it's hard to sell it to my customers.

Anonymous
January 31, 2008
Very simple one - we do a lot of interactive 3D and there's no easy way to get from a pick on a mesh back to anything in the modelled world. If we could have a Tag object on a GeometryModel3D (and everything else that a hit test sees) it would save us carrying a ton of dictionaries round. We also have a desperate need to be able to play media from a byte[] instead of a Uri - you wouldn't believe the hoops we have to jump through to deal with rights-managed media!
Anonymous
January 31, 2008
Another barrier to adopting WPF has been lack of a WPF/XAML clipboard format that is pastable into Office applications. A WPF/XAML clipboard format was discussed at the 2003 PDC but not yet delivered on. Thanks.
Anonymous
January 31, 2008
The ability to inherit xaml. Want to be able to create a base page.xaml and then inherit it and have the base page populate the inheriting page in design time. Much like winforms does.
Anonymous
January 31, 2008
The most critical need is attentiveness to https://connect.microsoft.com/feedback/default.aspx?SiteID=212, or some other place where we can submit bug reports and feature suggestions and see timely response. For example: https://connect.microsoft.com/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=296623&SiteID=212 Broadly, I think bug fixes and performance issues are the most important. We can work around missing controls, implement our own features, and hand-code our XAML, but some bugs have no workarounds, and there's only so much we can do to speed startup time and reduce memory usage.
Anonymous
January 31, 2008

Editable text run
Localization
Localization
Have I mentioned localization?
Extensibility model for spell-checking

Anonymous
January 31, 2008
1)WindowsFormHost control to respect the WPF airspace!!! The WindowsFormHost should not steal focus and insert itself as the topmost control on the screen. 2)The MediaElement/MediaPlayer needs to be able to play DVD's. We also need lower level access to the dshow filter graph. Perhaps some events like OnBuildingGraph that will allow us to override the default and build the graph ourselves.
Anonymous
January 31, 2008
I'll second the need to open up WPF programming from retained mode. Our engineering app cannot possibly represent all that we need to using retained-mode objects. Our experiments have shown that the memory overhead and perf is just waay too poor to seriously consider WPF even though we'd love to use it for the h/w accel and richer capabilities. Please open up milcore and document an immediate-mode API into WPF. Also, +1 on a clipboard format to pass rich contents (e.g. WPF-created drawings) between our app and others like Office.
Anonymous
January 31, 2008
Please provide better support for rendering streamed video. I will settle for the ability to set direct show filter properties and build and run the filter graph in a MediaElement or something similar. I got direct show filters but I can't use them in WPF at the moment!
Anonymous
January 31, 2008

DirectShow. For video capture.
VisualBrush from other Applications. Like DWM makes it in taskbar thumbnails or flip3d. With RenderTransform support.
Hardware BitmapEffects
Managed BitmapEffects
public IInputProvider and related classes and methods (InputManager.RegisterInputProvider).
Multi-Tier reference application samples.

Anonymous
January 31, 2008

Allow data templates to be selected via exposing an interface such as "IDataTemplateType" with a string GetTemplateName(), an attribute, or using the TypeDescriptor system. Get rid of the hacky special case data template selection code for XmlDataSource and XLinq.
Fix the performance of the tree control when displaying large data sets.
Add a native data grid control.
Add multiple selections support to CollectionView to fully support the Model/View/ModelView system.

Anonymous
January 31, 2008
A few more things..

Eliminate the airspace requirements for embedded non-wpf controls.
Provide better interop access to allow drawing to internal textures via OpenGl or DirectX.
Support the "Event" tags in XamlReader to better support dynamically loaded UI and dynamic languages such as IronPython.

Anonymous
January 31, 2008
DataGridViews! a DataGridView that surpasses all DataGridViews, especially when the backend is SQL Server 2008--drag and drop tables, master-detail relationships, table navigator bar (first record, next record, etc.), search, fixed columns, fast access, one-click alternation between different views (card, repeating rows, etc), RAD experience of MS Access, different customizations for large datasets and small. WPF is elegant and pretty, but DATA DATA DATA power is what businesses need.
Anonymous
January 31, 2008
Rather than asking for new things, I would like to thank the WPF team for what they gave us.... WPF, we love you
Anonymous
February 01, 2008
--but we'd love you even more if you had a datagrid.
Anonymous
February 01, 2008
One more thing....

The ability to outline a TextBlock. Thanks for listening!

Anonymous
February 01, 2008
While on the subject of text, how about adding kerning and tracking features to TextBlock (or create a specialized Text element with these features).
Anonymous
February 02, 2008
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 02, 2008
I would love to see built in support for 3D curve patches
Anonymous
February 03, 2008
It would be helpful to be able to use some simple equations to set XAML properties. A little bit of simple functionality could eliminate the need for code behind in many cases. Sometimes a XAML propety is related to another XAML property by a simple equation, usually an addition or subtraction. XAML can not do this now and therefore requires code behind to do simple tasks.
Anonymous
February 03, 2008
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 04, 2008
En un blog msdn encontré el siguiente título " Want some WPF improvements/features: Tell
Anonymous
February 04, 2008

Extend the Command system see here for details: http://joshsmithonwpf.wordpress.com/2007/07/12/extending-the-wpf-command-system/
allow more control over the CommandManager... a complete refresh on every click and keystroke is sometimes not what I want (for performance reason) so a bit more control over the CommandManager behavior would be good. -better support of generics in xaml and data binding (http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2340174&SiteID=1) -professional and easy to use localization/globalization support -API support for spell checking (so that it can be used in a custom control) -data binding for documents (FlowDocument) -fix the blurry text and image issue other things: -refactoring for XAML would be nice. -enable vista file dialogs in wpf and make them easily extensible -improve start up time

Anonymous
February 06, 2008
Thought of another one... I'd like to see WPF supported in a server (ASP.NET) environment. WPF makes it really easy to create images on-the-fly, and although it currently seems to work OK, the official MS position is that's it's unsupported (meaning it could stop working at any time).
Anonymous
February 06, 2008
I would also like a GridView type object. I have made my own in projects now, but it would be VERY handy. The only excuse I have heard so far from MS is that "third party providers are making solutions for this". The only problem is 3rd party providers charge $600 for it. That is not a valid excuse and the GridView is something MS needs! Just about any tool that winforms has, WPF should have too, but GridView is the most important!!! Thanks.
Anonymous
February 07, 2008
Support for the vertical text writing mode would be great.
Anonymous
February 09, 2008
Pixel Shader Support Alpha Channel Video Codec Expressions in Bindings Layer Blending Modes (with a new Layer container, or blending modes specifiable for Canvas, Grid, etc..) Succinct On-demand Drawing interface..for massive data visualization.
Anonymous
February 10, 2008

DirectShow-like capture supported.
Direct3D/XNA integration. Would be great not to have airspace issues with WPF/D3D/MDX. May be it would be enough if you provide shared texture (or something like this to allow VRAM <-> VRAM manipulation)

Anonymous
February 11, 2008
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 12, 2008
Certain controls are missing from WPF - propertryGrid etc. It is posible to implement them using a WinForms container, but it is an extra level of hassel, and can go wrong. As these controls are included as standard in non-wpf, it would be nice to be able to use them natively in wpf without shelling out even more for third party controls. Thank you for taking the time to ask about what we needed in wpf
Anonymous
February 12, 2008
I've been using VS 2008 for a couple of weeks now, and find editing XAML in XAML view really needs a lot of work. All the squiggles show up the very second you type something that has the wrong syntax, then after you finish typing the XAML squiggles are still all over the place. You have to close the file then, reopen it to view the XAMl without the squiggles. Real pain... When you declare a converter at the top of the XAML file, VS put's squiggles under the class name. The program runs fine, etc, but you still get those erroneous squiggles. Thanks Karl
Anonymous
February 12, 2008
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 16, 2008
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 17, 2008
The biggie: Generics support. This probably won't happen but the whole framework should have supported generics from the ground up.
Anonymous
February 18, 2008
List of show stoppers that keeps us from moving to WPF:
DirectX interoperability - now, WPF is implemented on top of DirectX, but there's no (usable) way of mixing it with your own DirectX content? Please give us something like DirectXCanvas...
The blurry text issue... mentioned many times before, but it's really ironic that the next generation presentation framework isn't even able to render text correctly
Refactoring support in VS. I know this is not easy (and in some cases practically impossible due to missing type information), but this is really a big problem for large applications...
Anonymous
February 18, 2008
Something I haven't seen mentioned: some sort of "native" vector graphics format, an analogue to the bitmap formats like BMP, PNG. Why not have a SVG importer that returns a DrawingImage? XAML may be ok for representing vector graphics, but it is write-only - even MS's very own famed Expression Design cannot re-import the XAML files it wrote itself.
Anonymous
February 19, 2008
I would really like that the specialized collections used in controls would implement the generic IEnumerable<>, ICollection<> and IList<> interfaces, instead of their non-generic conterparts. That would ease the use of LINQ without resorting to Enumerable.Cast. Some of them are already typified, but just don't implemente the interface. Anothe welcome addition would be a multi-select tree view
Anonymous
February 19, 2008

Bitmap effects not rendered in software
Multi-selection treeview

Anonymous
February 20, 2008
I think there should be a way to data bind the PasswordBox.Password property. I know this can introduce a security issue, but, there are cases where it doesn't matter. I think it should be possible, just have a warning in the documentation about it. Either that, or there should be a way to easily make it use the same ErrorTemplate that is used for TextBox where it displays the red border around it if there's a validation error.
Anonymous
February 21, 2008
Some WPF RichTextBox enhancements: Optionally allow extraction of XAML that includes UIElements with text (from TextRange, Selection and DragDrop data object). Offer attributes to hide content (consistent with RTF codes v and v0 to mark hidden text) Offer attributes to protect content (consistent with RTF codes protect and protect0) Offer attributes to enable/disable spell checking for individual text runs (so as-you-type spell-checking will skip specially-formatted but valid text). Offer custom dictionaries for spell-check. Improve performance of RichTextBox editing (so characters typed and changes made appear more quickly even with a large amount of text).
Anonymous
February 25, 2008

I'd love to see a "LocalStyle" property layer added. This would sit just above the control's local properties but replace value define by the Style that is applied today. I want to override some items in the current style but not replace the whole style. I don't know how the control is currently styled (so I don't know what I could define for the BasedOn of a new style).
An databinding UpdateTrigger of PreviewLostFocus (as opposed to the current LostFocus). I need to be able to ensure that the data being bound is valid before I let the focus move. This means attempting binding when the control is about to lose focus - not after. There are other focus issues that should be addressed as well (a button, for example, should have a flag that tells it to grab the focus before firing its Click event. Without this, databinding doesn't happen until after th Click code has executed -- at it typically saves the data... except for that last field :-))
Multiple monitor support
Additional votes for the following: * Text (including tooltips) that is not blurry. * HTML rendering in the Frame from a String.

Anonymous
February 28, 2008

Blend modes.
Ability to warp/deform visuals (afaik there isn't even a way to go about even simple "fake perspective" effects (like skewing a rectangle into a trapezoid shape), never mind more complex grid deformations.
Better media APIs (something like DirectSound would be good). It should be easy to create somethign like a fully functional managed graphic equalizer with WPF.

Anonymous
March 02, 2008
I would like to see an improvement on the Data Providers provided, which means:

Improvements on the existing providers like the ObjectDataProvider
Include additional providers; seems to me there could easily be a LINQ data provider that works with a DataContext derived object..., or an ADO.NET data provider that works with table adapters, datasets, etc. I would also like to see improvements on the ListView, and the views that are supported. I was reading on a blog about some of the new controls coming. Any additional controls you could provide would be very helpful.

Anonymous
March 03, 2008
Obviously I'd second the need for Calendar, DateTimePicker and DataGrid (which I believe are coming in a service pack for 3.5?). But what I'd like to see is an extension to Visual Studio 2008 that displays a diagram view of Bindings display them as wires between controls and data objects.
Anonymous
March 11, 2008
ListView should support Tile View and other views that Windows Explorer has.
Anonymous
March 11, 2008
I understand why the Window.Icon property needs to be an actual Icon (rather than some other bitmap image). However, I've got vector graphics that can have brushes applied to them at runtime, and I'd like to be able to set the icon accordingly. It would be nice if there was some (non-ugly) way, starting with an ImageSource, to get an icon. A converter, perhaps?
Anonymous
March 16, 2008
Blending Modes Even if it isn't perfect, it would open up a lot of doors. A Transitions Framework There are already many out there so creating an official one shouldn't be that hard. Even just a simple TransitionContentPresenter. I would wrather use a build in transitions framework.
Anonymous
March 16, 2008
It seems like a lot of these features boil down to a few things... Fix text rendering (or give the option for subpixel positioning to be disabled, etc) Better interop / pull in more features from DirectX. Include all the controls in the current version of WinForms.
Anonymous
March 16, 2008
I'd like to see additional LOB support.

Support for creating metafiles so that I can add the WPF graphics into MS-Office applications.
More controls as mentioned earlier
Better tutorials for WPF

Anonymous
March 17, 2008
Start up times must be improved. Pretty tough to have a client enjoy an application (beautiful as it may be), that takes a year to load.
Anonymous
March 20, 2008
I need to enable or disable controls in WPF Windows form using Converters in Xaml
Anonymous
March 20, 2008
I need to enable or disable controls in WPF Windows form using Converters in Xaml
Anonymous
March 25, 2008
PLEASE

Read/Write cells in ListView in DetailView
TextWrap for Labels ThanQ :)

Anonymous
March 25, 2008
AND

CheckListBox/RadioListBox controls
Events in Properties Window in the IDE
Update to the Visual Studio 2005 WPF/WCF Extensions of November 2006. <help yourself by helping others...>

Anonymous
March 26, 2008
A build-in IValueConverter which supports advanced C# like expression. Would be a great feature for Data Binding. Ability to refresh command more selectiveley. In our apps we have zillion of commands. Plus we do heavy work on keystrokes (not just text layouting, but whole document relayouting). Anyway that was ok in WinForm/GDI+, now in WPF every keystroke also trigger an IsEnabled check on all the command, and that has some visible negative performance impact.
Anonymous
March 27, 2008
How about making real world LOB application examples? How about a modern data grid?
Anonymous
March 29, 2008
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
April 08, 2009
The interview took place late last month as a result of the book that Van der Eem is having an American journalist write. The maker of the programme Un Dia Den Bida said before De Telegraaf: “ I have taken two cameras with me. I had one turned off after

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Want some WPF improvements/features: Tell us

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