Using XAML ScrollBar in WPF

XAML ScrollBar in WPF

The XAML Scrollbar element represents a scroll bar. This tutorial shows you how to use a ScrollBar control in WPF.

Introduction

The ScrollBar tag in XAML represents a WPF ScrollBar control.

<ScrollBar></ScrollBar>

The Width and Height properties represent the width and the height of a ScrollBar. The Name property represents the name of the control, that is a unique identifier of a control. The Margin property tells the location of a ScrollBar on the parent control.

The Orientation property sets the direction of scrolling that can be either horizontal or vertical.

The following code snippet sets the name, height, width, orientation, margin and background of a ScrollBar control.

<ScrollBar Name="McScroller" Orientation="Horizontal"
   Width ="250" Height="30"
   Margin="10,10,0,0"
   Background="LightSalmon" />

The ScrollBar looks as in Figure 1.


Figure 1.

Setting up ScrollBar Value

The Value property of ScrollBar sets up the current value of a ScrollBar control. The Minimum and Maximum properties represent the minimum and maximum range of a ScrollBar. In the following code, I set the Value property to 50 and now the ScrollBar looks as in Figure 2.

<ScrollBar Name="McScroller" Orientation="Horizontal"
   Margin="10,10,0,0"
   Width ="250" Height="30"
   Background="LightSalmon"
   Minimum="1" Maximum="240"
   Value="50" />

Figure 2.

Creating a ScrollBar Dynamically

The ScrollBar class in WPF represents a ScrollBar control. This class is defined in the System.Windows.Controls.Primitives namespace. Before you use this class, be sure to import this namespace.

The following code snippet creates a ScrollBar at run-time and sets its orientation, width, height, background, minimum, maximum and value properties.

private void CreateDynamicScrollBar()
{
   ScrollBar hSBar = new ScrollBar();
   hSBar.Orientation = Orientation.Horizontal;
   hSBar.HorizontalAlignment = HorizontalAlignment.Left;
   hSBar.Width = 250;
   hSBar.Height = 30;
   hSBar.Background = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.LightSalmon);
   hSBar.Minimum=1;
   hSBar.Maximum=240;
   hSBar.Value=50;
   LayoutRoot.Children.Add(hSBar);
}

How to add a scroll event handler to a WPF ScrollBar.

The following XAML code snippet adds a Scroll event handler to a ScrollBar.

<ScrollBar Name="McScroller" Orientation="Horizontal"
   Margin="10,10,0,0"
   Width ="250" Height="30"
   Background="LightSalmon"
   Minimum="1" Maximum="240"
   Value="50" Scroll="ScrollBar_Scroll"/>

The Scroll event handler code looks as in following:

private void ScrollBar_Scroll(object sender, System.Windows.Controls.Primitives.ScrollEventArgs e)
{
   // Do something here
}

Summary

In this article, I discussed how to create and use a ScrollBar control available in WPF.