Before reading this article, please go through the following articles.

  1. Introduction To Universal Windows Platform (UWP) App Development Using Windows 10 And Visual Studio 2015
  2. Howto add UWP ToolKit controls in Universal Application Development With XAML ANDC#

Reading this article, you can learn how to use UWP Tool Kit Control - ImageEx in Universal Windows Apps development, with XAML and Visual C#. ImageEx Control is an extension of image control which holds two sources of images, the Placeholder image and Source image.

The following important tools are required for developing UWP.

  1. Windows 10 (Recommended)
  2. Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition (It is a free software available online).

Now, we can discuss step by step App development.

Step 1 - Open Visual Studio 2015 -> Start -> New Project -> Select Universal (under Visual C# -> Windows) -> Blank App -> Give a suitable name for your App (UWPToolkitImageEx) -> OK.

Step 2 - Choose the Target and Minimum platform version that your Windows Universal Application will support. After this, the project creates App.xaml and MainPage.xaml.

Step 3 - Add TextBlock control and change the name and text property of title.

For adding UWPToolKit Control, Please refer,
Step 4 - Add new folder as images, for images for ImageExControl.
Add two images in the images folder.


Step 5 - Add the following XAML code for creating Local Resource for image, used to add ImageEx control.

  1. <Page.Resources>
  3. <ResourceDictionary>
  5. <BitmapImage x:Key="Img1" UriSource="/Images/img1.jpg"/>
  7. <BitmapImage x:Key="img2" UriSource="/Images/img2.jpg"/>
  9. </ResourceDictionary>
  11. </Page.Resources>

Step 6 - Add UWP Tool Kit namespace in Mainpage.xaml.

  1. xmlns:Controls="using:Microsoft.Toolkit.Uwp.UI.Controls"

Add ImageEx control from UWP Tool Kit and change the name property.



Step 7 - Set the Placeholdersource image as Local Resource.



Step 8 - Finally, your design screen looks like the following.

Note - Automatically, the following code will be generated in XAML code View, while we are done in the design View.

  1. <Page xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:local="using:UWPToolkitImageEx" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" xmlns:Controls="using:Microsoft.Toolkit.Uwp.UI.Controls" x:Class="UWPToolkitImageEx.MainPage" mc:Ignorable="d">
  2. <Page.Resources>
  3. <ResourceDictionary>
  4. <BitmapImage x:Key="Img1" UriSource="/Images/img1.jpg" />
  5. <BitmapImage x:Key="img2" UriSource="/Images/img2.jpg" /> </ResourceDictionary>
  6. </Page.Resources>
  7. <Grid Background="{ThemeResource ApplicationPageBackgroundThemeBrush}">
  8. <TextBlock x:Name="textBlock" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="24,34,-14,0" TextWrapping="Wrap" Text="UWP ToolKit ImageEx Control Demo" VerticalAlignment="Top" Height="32" Width="350" FontWeight="Bold" FontSize="18" />
  9. <Controls:ImageEx x:Name="ImExTest" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="45,165,0,0" VerticalAlignment="Top" Height="280" Width="264" PlaceholderSource="{StaticResource Img1}" Source="{StaticResource Img1}" ScrollViewer.HorizontalScrollBarVisibility="Visible" PlaceholderStretch="UniformToFill" PlaceholderAnimationDuration="0" /> </Grid>
  10. </Page>
Step 9 - Deploy your app in Local Machine. The output of the UWPToolkitImageEx App is shown below.

1. With ImageEx control- Placeholdersource image -

2. With Source image,

Summary - Now, you have successfully tested UWP Tool Kit - ImageEx Control in Visual C# - UWP environment.