Auto-Hidden Tool Windows

Tool windows in auto-hide state show tabs along a tray area on the side of their dock host. When a tab is clicked, the related tool window's content is displayed in an animated popup.

The Solution Explorer tool window in AutoHide state with its popup displayed

Allowing Auto-Hide

Only tool windows can be auto-hidden. A global DockSite.CanToolWindowsAutoHide property (defaults to true) determines the default value for whether they have that capability, but it can be overridden at an instance-level by setting the ToolWindow.CanAutoHide property.

Programmatically Auto-Hiding a Tool Window

A tool window can be programmatically auto-hidden by calling the ToolWindow.AutoHide method. An overload of the method allows you to specify the Side against which to auto-hide.

Behavior and Animation Options

These options control auto-hide functionality behavior and ensuing animation:

Appearance Options

These options control the appearance of auto-hide tabs:

Iterating Auto-Hidden Tool Windows

These DockSite properties are the four collections of ToolWindowContainer controls, one collection for each side of the dock site.

• DockSite.AutoHideLeftContainers
• DockSite.AutoHideTopContainers
• DockSite.AutoHideRightContainers
• DockSite.AutoHideBottomContainers

Each collection accepts one or more ToolWindowContainer controls, each of which can contain one or more ToolWindow controls.

The properties above are simple wrappers for similar properties on the DockHost returned by the DockSite.PrimaryDockHost property. You can iterate through those collections to see which tool windows are on each side of the primary dock host.

You can also examine each floating DockHost, if there are any, by iterating the DockSite.FloatingDockHosts collection and examining the auto-hide container properties on them (e.g., DockHost.AutoHideLeftContainers).

Determining If an Auto-Hide Popup Is Displayed

The DockHost.IsAutoHidePopupOpen property returns true when there is an auto-hide popup displayed.

The DockHost.AutoHidePopupToolWindow property returns the ToolWindow that is currently open in that popup. The ToolWindow.IsAutoHidePopupOpen property of that tool window will return true while it is open in the popup.

Preventing an Auto-Hide Popup from Closing

Auto-hide popups will close by default after a brief delay whenever the keyboard focus is moved outside of them. This can be a problem in scenarios where a dialog Window is opened from the tool window displayed in the auto-hide popup. In that scenario, the keyboard focus moves to the dialog and the auto-hide popup is closed. However, you may wish to keep the auto-hide popup visible while the dialog is displayed so that focus properly returns to it when the dialog is closed.

This code shows how to display a dialog and keep any current auto-hide popup open:

try {
	dockSite.AutoHidePopupClosesOnLostFocus = false;
	window.ShowDialog();
}
finally {
	dockSite.AutoHidePopupClosesOnLostFocus = true;
}

Dynamically Altering the Auto-Hide Side

The WindowsAutoHiding event is raised whenever one or more tool windows are auto-hidden, allowing for the side upon which they are being auto-hidden to be customized. This is useful in scenarios like when you wish to restrict auto-hiding to only the left/right or top/bottom of a dock host.

The event is passed arguments of type DockingWindowsAutoHidingEventArgs, which has a Side property. An event handler can examine the list of windows being auto-hidden and can choose to change the side to another side.

Auto-Hide Popup Events

The WindowAutoHidePopupOpened and WindowAutoHidePopupClosed events on DockSite are raised whenever the auto-hide popup is opened or closed. The event arguments specify which tool window was opened or closed.

Notes on Interop Usage

If you use an interop (WinForms, ActiveX, etc.) control in your docking windows, auto-hide popups in their default configuration will not appear on top of the interop content due to WPF airspace issues with interop content in the same Window. By setting the DockSite.UseHostedPopups property to false, non-hosted popups will be used to display auto-hide content instead. This uses a separate Window to render the popup and thereby allows WPF content in the popup to render above the interop content. The only downside to setting this property is that you lose the popup open/close animation.

See the Interop Compatibility topic for more information.