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Answer 1

A:

A Context Menu or a Menu in any Windows Application is managed by Windows Operating System itself. You can go to Display Properties > Appearance to change how a Menu is displayed in the System.

For a WPF Application, you may able to subscribe to the Menu's Opening/Opened event and start a Storyboard to animate it. I am not sure on how to do that but I think that is the way you should be able to change the behavior.

decyclone 2010-06-25 22:09:09

WPF does not use Windows to render anything. It has its own presentation layer that it routes directly to DirectX. The animation it is doing is coded into the template or code of the relevant WPF assembly somehow. That's the part I want to override. It is not built into the OS (though the setting it checks when deciding to animate is).

Scott Bilas 2010-06-25 22:31:45

So, why is it that when I open a menu in a Wpf Application, an effect that I selected in windows appearance is applied to it?

decyclone 2010-06-25 22:48:00

That flag is available to any app. Wpf checks it when deciding whether to animate or not. That's not necessarily the same thing as the OS doing the rendering of the menu.

Scott Bilas 2010-06-28 18:32:00

Answer 2

+2 A:

In short, decyclone is right; it's coming from the OS, but here's why:

The default template for a MenuItem contains the markup and logic for displaying submenus. Look there.

When I opened a copy of a MenuItem template I found no fewer than four ControlTemplates, three Styles, two Brushes, the list went on. Use Blend to "Edit a Copy" of any MenuItem.

Inside the ControlTemplate relevant to a MenuItem's sub-menus is a control primitive called a Popup, declared like this:

            <Popup x:Name="PART_Popup" 
                   AllowsTransparency="true" 
                   Focusable="false" 
                   HorizontalOffset="-2" 
                   IsOpen="{Binding IsSubmenuOpen, 
                            RelativeSource={RelativeSource TemplatedParent}}" 
                   PopupAnimation="{DynamicResource 
                                    {x:Static SystemParameters.MenuPopupAnimationKey}}" 
                   Placement="Right" 
                   VerticalOffset="-3">

Note the PopupAnimation property; it points to SystemParameters.MenuPopupAnimationKey. That's the thing that's animating your menu.

This gives you two choices that occur to me, both of which will require that you define a custom template for the MenuItems in your app:

Re-configure PART_Popup so that AllowsTranparency="False"; or
Re-template MenuItem for your application, removing the PopupAnimation's reference to the OS animation.

You could then author your own triggers for animating how that popup appears.

Rob Perkins 2010-07-01 00:27:37

Yes, that's what I meant by it not being an OS feature. WPF is choosing to animate or not based on a query of the OS flag. What I needed to know was where it was buried in what template. Thanks!

Scott Bilas 2010-07-01 15:30:19

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How to prevent animating menus in WPF?

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