WPF About Box (VB)

Every application has an AboutBox (and WinForms even ships a template for it), but there isn't a common one for WPF Applications... until now. This extension has been updated and now only installs on Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2.

This Item Template creates an AboutBox for a WPF Application in VB, and uses assembly attributes in your project to control what data is displayed in the AboutBox (similar to the way the WinForms template works). Just change the following attributes into your AssemblyInfo.vb file (note: in VB projects this file is hidden, but you can show all hidden files, or edit this in the project's property pages) to affect what is shown in the dialog:

<assembly: AssemblyTitle("WPF About Box Sample App")>
<assembly: AssemblyDescription("This is a simple application to show of the WPF About Box.")>
<assembly: AssemblyCompany("Microsoft Samples")>
<assembly: AssemblyProduct("WPF About Box Sample")>
<assembly: AssemblyCopyright("Copyright © 2009 - Pedro Silva")>
<assembly: AssemblyVersion("1.0.*")>

Or, if you prefer, you can add the following XML Data Provider to your Window.Resources of the Application.Resources. If no data is entered through attributes, then this XML will be used.

<XmlDataProvider x:Key="aboutProvider" XPath="ApplicationInfo">

    <x:XData>

        <ApplicationInfo xmlns="">

            <Title>About WPF AboutBox</Title>

            <Product>Sample WPF AboutBox</Product>

            <Company>Microsoft Samples</Company>

            <Copyright>Copyright © 2009 - Pedro Silva</Copyright>

            <Description>blah, blah, blah

            </Description>

            <Version>1.0.0.0</Version>

            <Link Uri="http://blogs.msdn.com/pedrosilva">More Info</Link>

        </ApplicationInfo>

    </x:XData>

</XmlDataProvider>

To launch the AboutBox in your application, you will need to add the following code to your program (usually in a menu handler for Help > About):

    Dim about As New AboutBox(Me)
    about.ShowDialog()
 

This Item Template also creates an image file (AboutLogo.png) that is used for the AboutBox's banner. Edit this file to provide your own product-specific image for the banner.

Note:When the AboutLogo file is added to the project through the template, you may get a build error saying this file is not part of the project. To fix this, save and rebuild the whole solution. If it persists, close and restart VS... it has always worked after that.