Create popup "toaster" notifications in Windows with .NET

Question

I am using .NET and am creating a desktop app/service that will display notifications in the corner of my Desktop when certain events are triggered. I don't want to use a regular Message Box b/c that would be too intrusive. I want notifications to slide into view and then fade out after a few seconds. I am thinking of something that will act very much like the Outlook alerts that one gets when a new message arrives. The question is: Should I use WPF for this? I've never done anything with WPF but will happily try it if that's best means to the end. Is there a way to accomplish this with regular .NET libraries?

Answer 1

WPF makes this absolutely trivial: It would proably take ten minutes or less. Here are the steps:

1. Create a Window, set AllowsTransparency="true" and add a Grid to it
2. Set the Grid's RenderTransform to a ScaleTransform with origin of 0,1
3. Create an animation on the grid that animates the ScaleX 0 to 1 then later animates the Opacity from 1 to 0
4. In the constructor calculate Window.Top and Window.Left to place the window in the lower right-hand corner of the screen.

That's all there is to it.

Using Expression Blend it took about 8 minutes me to generate the following working code:

<Window
    x:Class="NotificationWindow"
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
  Title="Notification Popup" Width="300" SizeToContent="Height"
  WindowStyle="None" AllowsTransparency="True" Background="Transparent">

  <Grid RenderTransformOrigin="0,1" >

    <!-- Notification area -->
    <Border BorderThickness="1" Background="Beige" BorderBrush="Black" CornerRadius="10">
      <StackPanel Margin="20">
        <TextBlock TextWrapping="Wrap" Margin="5">
          <Bold>Notification data</Bold><LineBreak /><LineBreak />
          Something just happened and you are being notified of it.
        </TextBlock>
        <CheckBox Content="Checkable" Margin="5 5 0 5" />
        <Button Content="Clickable" HorizontalAlignment="Center" />
      </StackPanel>
    </Border>

    <!-- Animation -->
    <Grid.Triggers>
      <EventTrigger RoutedEvent="FrameworkElement.Loaded">
        <BeginStoryboard>
          <Storyboard>
            <DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames Storyboard.TargetProperty="(UIElement.RenderTransform).(ScaleTransform.ScaleY)">
              <SplineDoubleKeyFrame KeyTime="0:0:0" Value="0"/>
              <SplineDoubleKeyFrame KeyTime="0:0:0.5" Value="1"/>
            </DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames>
            <DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames Storyboard.TargetProperty="(UIElement.Opacity)">
              <SplineDoubleKeyFrame KeyTime="0:0:2" Value="1"/>
              <SplineDoubleKeyFrame KeyTime="0:0:4" Value="0"/>
            </DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames>
          </Storyboard>
        </BeginStoryboard>
      </EventTrigger>
    </Grid.Triggers>

    <Grid.RenderTransform>
      <ScaleTransform ScaleY="1" />
    </Grid.RenderTransform>

  </Grid>

</Window>

With code behind:

using System;
using System.Windows;
using System.Windows.Threading;

public partial class NotificationWindow
{
  public NotificationWindow()
  {
    InitializeComponent();

    Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(DispatcherPriority.ApplicationIdle, new Action(() =>
    {
      var workingArea = System.Windows.Forms.Screen.PrimaryScreen.WorkingArea;
      var transform = PresentationSource.FromVisual(this).CompositionTarget.TransformFromDevice;
      var corner = transform.Transform(new Point(workingArea.Right, workingArea.Bottom));

      this.Left = corner.X - this.ActualWidth - 100;
      this.Top = corner.Y - this.ActualHeight;
    }));
  }
}

Since WPF is one of the regular .NET libraries, the answer is yes, it is possible to accomplish this with the "regular .NET libraries".

If you're asking if there is a way to do this without using WPF the answer is still yes, but it is extremely complex and will take more like 5 days than 5 minutes.