Why can't I set the Image Source in WPF app?

Question

I'm just learning WPF. I'm using VS 2008. I've added an Image control to my XAML, and I added a GIF file to the project. If I use the XAML Designer's property panel to set the image's Source property, the drop-down list for the Source property contains the following:

C:\Sample Project;component/pinHorizontal.gif

There are several problems with this:

1. My project, named "Sample Project," is not in the root of my drive.

2. Why is ";component" in there?

If I select this value as given, I get the error "Property value is not valid" (yeah, no kidding).

If I go into the XAML source and set the Source property manually, like so:

<Image Name="PinImage" Source="pinHorizontal.gif"/>

The XAML Designer gives me this error:

"The file pinHorizontal.gif is not part of the project or its 'Build Action' property is not set to 'Resource'."

Why is this task so difficult? How do I assign an image source?

Answer 1

Right click on the image file(pinHorizontal.gif) in the SolutionExplorer, Go to properties, here is the 'Build Action' property, you need to set it to 'Resource'. Hope it helps!!

Answer 2

Have a read through this article - though be warned it's not particularly light reading :-)

I suspect what you want for your image path is pack://application:,,,/pinHorizontal.gif. if your image is set to a BuildAction of Resource, this will work fine.