Ezequiel Jadib’s Blog

Two years ago, together with Matias Woloski we wrote the Outlook Bar for the Composite Application Block (CAB). I can say that it was a popular workspace, with more than 19,000 downloads!. Now that we shipped CompositeWPF (Prism), some people at the CompositeWPF community started asking for the OutlookBar for CompositeWPF, so Julian Dominguez, Matias Woloski and me decided to spend some time and create the Composite WPF version.

Usage

First of all, you have to register the region adapter mapping in the Bootstrapper as shown in the code below:

protected override RegionAdapterMappings ConfigureRegionAdapterMappings()
{
    IEventAggregator eventAggregator = Container.Resolve<IEventAggregator>();

    RegionAdapterMappings mappings = base.ConfigureRegionAdapterMappings();

    mappings.RegisterMapping(typeof(OutlookBarControl), new OutlookBarControlRegionAdapter(eventAggregator));

    return mappings;
}

Now you can add the OutlookBarControl to your Shell/View XAML (you have to declare the namespace on the top of the file):

<Controls:OutlookBarControl 

       cal:RegionManager.RegionName="{x:Static infrastructure:RegionNames.OutlookBarRegion}"/>
                

To add views, just obtain the region and call the Add method as you do with other regions: 

IRegionManager regionManager = Container.Resolve<IRegionManager>();
MyView view = new MyView();
OutlookBarControl.SetOutlookBarMetadata(view, new OutlookBarMetadata
    {
        Title = "Mail",
        Payload = "MyPayload"
    });

regionManager.Regions[RegionNames.OutlookBarRegion].Add(view);
regionManager.Regions[RegionNames.OutlookBarRegion].Activate(view);

As you may noticed, in the preceding code we are also setting the OutlookBarMetadata attached property to the view. This attached property is used by the control template and by the OutlookBarControlRegionAdapter.

• In the control template we are using the Title property in the OutlookBarControl header and in the buttons.
• In the region adapter we are using the payload to publish the OutlookBarEvent. This event is published every time you select a view.

The OutlookBarMetadata serves a similar purpose the OutlookBarSmartPartInfo served in the CAB version.

Disclaimer

This code is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Acknowledgments

The control template is based on this article on CodeProject.

Download

You can get the OutlookBar by downloading the latest change set of the CompositeWPF Contrib source control.

Stay tuned, we are working on v1.1 of the OutlookBar.