Silverlight Button Control

Silverlight Button Control

This article demonstrates how to create and use a Button control in Silverlight using XAML and C#.

Creating a Button

The Button element represents a Silverlight Button control in XAML.

The Width and Height attributes of the Button element represent the width and the height of a Button. The Content property of the Button element sets the text of a button. The x:Name attribute represents the name of the control, which is a unique identifier of a control.

The code snippet in Listing 1 creates a Button control and sets the name, height, width, and content of a Button control.

Button x:Name="DrawCircleButton" Height="80" Width="150"

Content="Draw Circle" >

</Button>

Listing 1

The output looks like Figure 1.

Figure 1

As you can see from Figure 1, by default the Button is place in the center of the page. We can place a Button control where we want by using the Margin, VerticalAlignment and HorizontalAlignment attributes that sets the margin, vertical alignment, and horizontal alignment of a control.

The code snippet in Listing 2 sets the position of the Button control in the left top corner of the page.

<Button x:Name="DrawCircleButton" Height="30" Width="100"

Content="Draw Circle"

Margin="10,10,0,0" VerticalAlignment="Top"

HorizontalAlignment="Left">

</Button>

Listing 2

Adding a Button Click Event Handler

The Click attribute of the Button element adds the click event handler. The following code adds the click event handler for a Button.

</Button>

The code for the click event handler looks like following.

private void DrawCircleButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)

{

}

Now, whatever code you write in the click event handler that will be executed on the Button click. The code listed in Listing 3 creates a circle on the Button click event handler.

private void DrawCircleButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)

{

// creates a Circle

Ellipse circle = new Ellipse();

circle.Width = 200;

circle.Height = 200;

circle.Fill = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Yellow);

circle.Stroke = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Black);

circle.StrokeThickness = 4;

LayoutRoot.Children.Add(circle);

}

Listing 3

Formatting a Button

Not let's get a little creative. How about we create a Button control with a border formatting, background, and foreground of the Button?

The BorderBrush property of the Button sets a brush to draw the border of a Button. You may use any brush to fill the border. The following code snippet uses a linear gradient brush to draw the border with a combination of red and blue color.

<Button.BorderBrush>

</LinearGradientBrush>

</Button.BorderBrush>

The Background and Foreground properties of the Button set the background and foreground colors of a Button. You may use any brush to fill the border. The following code snippet uses linear gradient brushes to draw the background and foreground of a Button.

<Button.Background>

</LinearGradientBrush>

</Button.Background>

<Button.Foreground>

</LinearGradientBrush>

</Button.Foreground>

The new Button looks like Figure 2.

Figure 2

Mouse Rollover Formatting

How about giving some affects to your Button control when a mouse is over the Button and mouse leaves the Button area? We can achieve this by adding MouseEnter and MouseLeave event handler. The code listed in Listing 4 sets the background and foreground colors of a Button on mouse enter and mouse leave event handlers.

private void DrawCircleButton_MouseEnter(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)

{

DrawCircleButton.Background = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Yellow );

DrawCircleButton.Foreground = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Green);

}

private void DrawCircleButton_MouseLeave(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)

{

DrawCircleButton.Background = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Red);

DrawCircleButton.Foreground = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Purple);

}

Listing 4

Setting Image as Background of a Button

To set an image as background of a Button, we can set an image as the Background of the Button. The following code snippet sets the background of a Button to an image.

<Button.Background>

</Button.Background>

The new output looks like Figure 3.

Figure 3

Creating a Button Dynamically

The code listed in Listing 5 creates a Button control programmatically. First, it creates a Button object and sets its width, height, contents, background and foreground and later the Button is added to the LayoutRoot.

private void CreateAButton()

{

Button btn = new Button();

btn.Height = 80;

btn.Width = 150;

btn.Content = "Click ME";

btn.Background = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Orange);

btn.Foreground = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Black);

LayoutRoot.Children.Add(btn);

}

Listing 5

Summary

In this article, I discussed how we can create a Button control in Silverlight and C#. We also saw how we can format a Button by setting its border, background, and foreground properties. After that, we saw you to set an image as the background of a Button. In the end of this article, we saw how to create a Button dynamically.