Create powerful user controls in WPF

Question

I know that I cannot spawn different threads and put it in a UI thread to add it to the visual tree, because it will throw an exception that cannot access this object because it has a different thread.

My current scenario is that I strongly create a user interface control environment, for example, like 200 (FrameworkContentElement) controls and add it to DockWindow. Is it possible for me not to freeze the user interface while creating this and try to load them into the user interface thread? I can’t even show the progress dialog, because it will use the user interface thread when showing the dialog when working on another thread, it’s fine if I need to process the data and put it in the user interface, but this time I need to create these Controls user interface.

One approach that I thought was creating user interface controls and serializing them into a MemoryStream and loading them into the user interface stream, one of the problems is that I have to re-bind the DataContext to the controls, but this is normal, in this moment I can delegate it to another thread. The problem is still that it is doable ?

I tried mixing the Task object and Thread to make ApartmentState STA, but still no luck.

public static Task<T> StartSTATask<T>(Func<T> func) { var tcs = new TaskCompletionSource<T>(); Thread thread = new Thread(() => { try { tcs.SetResult(func()); } catch (Exception e) { tcs.SetException(e); } }); thread.SetApartmentState(ApartmentState.STA); thread.Start(); return tcs.Task; } 

EDIT . These controls are again FrameworkContentElement; virtualizing the controls in this scenario will not help. This is with FlowDocument controls creating runtime controls. Say Runs, Tables, Paragraphs, etc. . Therefore ListBox, TreeViews , etc. Not applicable in this scenario.

Answer 1

200 controls should not represent that a big problem for rendering WPF on a decent machine could take several thousand primitives.

You can display a progress bar when loading data and when parsing it. You can then throttle the creation of user interface elements, if necessary, by using a process loop and a thread outside the UI stream over your data and calling the user interface thread to create the controls. You can even separate instances with a little sleep to allow screen rendering, but use it only for a VERY heavy interface ...

... speaking - if your user interface is so heavy, you are probably designing it wrong. The question should not be "how many user interface elements can I add before my user interface slows down to drag and drop?" but "what is the least number of active user interface elements that can do this job?".

The word “active” refers to the approach used by lists in which virtual objects are valid — they are created only when necessary and are arranged if they are not visible. So instead of a DockPanel, consider using a virtualizing container, such as a ListView, if your user interface allows it;

I can clarify if you can give an example of your specific user interface elements.