Silverlight 4: How to use the all new right click context menu

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Introduction

In my previous posts, I discussed about “How to work with the Notification API” and “How to Capture Video from the Default Webcam”. In this post, I will describe another cool new feature: How to use the all new right click context menu of Silverlight 4.

Background

Silverlight 4 has now support for right click. You can now register the events “MouseRightButtonDown” and “MouseRightButtonUp” to any FrameworkElement. Hence, no need to use JavaScript to disable the right click option. If you want to disable the right click option, then just implement those events with:

e.Handled = true;

Code of Use

Now, if you want to implement a context menu on right click, create the popup context menu and position it in the right location. The following code will create the context menu:

private Popup CreateContextMenu(Point currentMousePosition)
{
    Popup popup = new Popup();
    Grid popupGrid = new Grid();
    Canvas popupCanvas = new Canvas();

    popup.Child = popupGrid;
    popupCanvas.MouseLeftButtonDown += (sender, e) => { HidePopup(); };
    popupCanvas.MouseRightButtonDown += (sender, e) => { e.Handled = true; HidePopup(); };
    popupCanvas.Background = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Transparent);
    popupGrid.Children.Add(popupCanvas);
    popupGrid.Children.Add(CreateContextMenuItems(currentMousePosition));

    popupGrid.Width = Application.Current.Host.Content.ActualWidth;
    popupGrid.Height = Application.Current.Host.Content.ActualHeight;
    popupCanvas.Width = popupGrid.Width;
    popupCanvas.Height = popupGrid.Height;

    return popup;
}

CreateContextMenuItems() will add some context menu items. Clicking on it will show which menu item was clicked by you. Up to this point, I had only talked about the creation of the customized context menu. Now we have to show it on right click inside the Silverlight application. In my example, I added a Border control which has the right click event registered. Now, check the code below which is responsible for showing the context menu:

void brdRightClickZone_MouseRightButtonUp(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e)
{
    txbMessage.Text = "Right Clicked";
    Point currentMousePosition = e.GetPosition(LayoutRoot);
    ShowPopup(currentMousePosition);
}

private void btnRightClick_MouseRightButtonDown(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e)
{
    e.Handled = true;
}

On right mouse down, I am setting e.Handled = true. This ensures that this will not show up the default Silverlight context menu, and the right mouse up implementation will popup the customized context menu at the current mouse position.

What next? Download the sample application and implement your own logic to create the customized context menu which will open on right click on your Silverlight application.