Adonis UI Documentation

Adonis UI is a lightweight, open-source UI toolkit for WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) applications. It provides styles and templates for all major WPF controls, aiming to provide a consistent, modern visual overhaul while staying close to the original WPF look and feel.

Key characteristics include:

• Drop-in replacement: It favors extending WPF's built-in controls rather than creating new ones, making it easy to integrate into existing applications.
• Zero-config by default: It requires no initial configuration to work, though it provides extensive options for controlling global and individual control behavior.
• Enhanced visuals: Includes features like runtime color scheme switching, accent color support, custom window title bars, cursor spotlight hover effects, ripple effects, and layers.

The RippleExtension.ForegroundBrush works automatically for primitive types, strings, and structs. However, for complex content (like child controls inside a button), the foreground brush will not be applied because the content cannot be easily duplicated for the ripple layer.

To ensure the foreground brush is applied to complex content, you must use a ContentTemplate instead of setting the Content property directly. This allows the UI to instantiate the content multiple times (once for the normal layer and once for the ripple layer).

For controls that do not natively have a ContentTemplate property, Adonis UI provides an attached property:

• MenuItemExtension.IconTemplate: Use this to serve the icon of a MenuItem as a DataTemplate.

Adonis UI features a layering system that automatically adjusts the colors of UI controls based on the depth of nesting. This prevents visibility issues (such as low color contrast) when controls are placed inside containers with different background colors.

By default, a window starts on layer 0, and all UI controls within it are placed on layer 1. When a container is assigned a higher layer, its children inherit that layer level (e.g., children of a layer 1 container move to layer 2). The system currently supports nesting up to layer 4.

To use this system, you can either allow specific controls to increase the layer automatically or force a specific layer value using the LayerExtension.

Adonis UI leverages standard WPF validation mechanisms (IDataErrorInfo or INotifyDataErrorInfo) to provide visual feedback. When a control is bound to an invalid property, the control template displays a red border and an error icon. The associated error message is shown in a popup when the control receives keyboard focus or when the user hovers over the error icon.

Supported controls include:

• CheckBox
• ComboBox
• DatePicker
• PasswordBox
• TextBox

Adonis UI MessageBox does not automatically localize button labels using system language packs; it uses English by default. To support localization, you must manually override the labels when defining your buttons in the MessageBoxModel.

var messageBox = new MessageBoxModel
{
    Text = "Hallo welt!",
    Buttons = MessageBoxButtons.YesNoCancel("Ja", "Nein", "Abbrechen"),
};

MessageBox.Show(messageBox);

To use the custom Adonis UI title bar, all your window classes must derive from AdonisUI.Controls.AdonisWindow.

Note that this is a complete rebuild of the title bar that mimics the Windows 10 look. It is not controlled by the operating system, so it will maintain this appearance across all operating systems (e.g., it will not switch to the Windows 7 aero style on Windows 7).

To use Adonis UI colors or brushes in your XAML, you must first include the Adonis UI namespace: xmlns:adonisUi="clr-namespace:AdonisUI;assembly=AdonisUI".

Use DynamicResource with the static resource keys provided by the library to ensure colors update correctly when themes change.

• To use a color: Color="{DynamicResource {x:Static adonisUi:Colors.Layer1BackgroundColor}}"
• To use a brush: Background="{DynamicResource {x:Static adonisUi:Brushes.Layer1BackgroundBrush}}"

Adonis UI provides several built-in loading indicators as DataTemplates that can be applied to a ContentControl. The available indicators are:

• LoadingCircle
• LoadingBars
• LoadingDots

These templates are scalable and automatically inherit the Foreground brush from their parent control. To use them, reference them via adonisUi:Templates using a DynamicResource.

<ContentControl ContentTemplate="{DynamicResource {x:Static adonisUi:Templates.LoadingCircle}}"
                Foreground="{DynamicResource {x:Static adonisUi:Brushes.ForegroundBrush}}"
                Width="24"
                Height="24"
                Focusable="False"/>