How to Open a New Window in a Specific Position in WPF

Learn how to position a new window adjacent to a button in WPF applications, enhancing user experience with better UI design.
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This video is based on the question https://stackoverflow.com/q/75774340/ asked by the user 'AniAxe' ( https://stackoverflow.com/u/17425292/ ) and on the answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/75778689/ provided by the user 'Prefetcher Shatnawi' ( https://stackoverflow.com/u/21242405/ ) at 'Stack Overflow' website. Thanks to these great users and Stackexchange community for their contributions.

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How to Open a New Window in a Specific Position in WPF

If you are working with Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and want to create a more intuitive user interface, you might find yourself needing to open a new window adjacent to a button. This is particularly useful when you want the new window to resemble a popup menu, rather than appearing at a central location on the screen, which is the default behavior using the WindowStartupLocation property.

The Problem: Default Window Position

By default, if you set:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

this centers the new window on the main screen. However, in scenarios where the button's position may vary—especially when it's part of a dynamic layout like a DockingManager—you may want the new window to appear adjacent to the button instead.

The Solution: Positioning the Window

Fortunately, you can achieve this by calculating the button's position relative to the main window and then setting the new window’s location using that position. Here’s a step-by-step breakdown of how to do this effectively:

Step 1: Get the Button's Position

You can use the TranslatePoint method to determine the position of the button in relation to your main window. Here’s how you can implement this:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

myButton: This refers to the button that you clicked.

ButtonWindow: This is the new window or the main window from which you are calculating the position.

The above line of code gets the button's coordinates relative to the main window.

Step 2: Create and Position the New Window

Once you have the button's position, you can create a new instance of your window and set its left and top properties based on the button's coordinates:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

MyWindow: Replace this with the actual name of your window class.

Full Code Example

Here’s how the complete function could look:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Conclusion

By following the above steps, you can easily control where your new window appears, thus enhancing the user experience in your WPF applications. Positioning the window next to a button makes it more convenient for the user, utilizing a design that resembles a popup.

This approach removes the hassle of users having to navigate through their screen to access new windows, maintaining a clean and efficient workflow.

Feel free to implement and modify this method in your projects as needed!

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