Is it absolutely safe to display a WPF window from a WinForms form?

Question

I would like to display a WPF window from a windows forms application (.NET 3.5).

This code seems to work without any problem in a sample project:

public partial class WinFormsForm1 : Form
{
    public WinFormsForm1() {
      InitializeComponent();
    }

    private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) {
      WpfWindow1 w = new WpfWindow1();
      w.Show();
    }
}

The form is started from Main() as a normal Winforms form:

Application.Run(new WinFormsForm1());

This seems to me too easy to be true. Are there any shortcomings in this? Is this safe to do?

Answer 1

It is really that simple. I can't think of any downside doing it this way.

Answer 2

It has one serious shortcoming: the modeless WPF window would not get keyboard input.

The EnableModelessKeyboardInterop method call needs to be added before the WPF window is shown:

  WpfWindow1 w = new WpfWindow1();
  System.Windows.Forms.Integration.ElementHost.EnableModelessKeyboardInterop(w);
  w.Show();

ElementHost resides in WindowsFormsIntegration.dll.

Further reading: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa348549.aspx

Answer 3

Bottom line: it is. We have pretty heavy application combining both WPF and winforms: windows, user controls, modal dialogs, you name it... and it's working in the medical market. We've got into some dark corners, one is the infamous EnableModelessKeyboardInterop, another is having the WPF window be the child of the Winforms window, which you can read Here