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Goal: Edit the ControlTemplate of a Window to remove the caption buttons via Blend (Close/Minimize/Maximize). Why? Need a window with a title bar (draggable) that can't be closed/minimized/resized. It's a temporary status window that pops up, etc. (I've seen solutions that go into the Win32 APIs, and wonder why. This should be doable via Blend!)

Anyway... Blend for Visual Studio 2017 seems to be OK with my attempt. At least initially.

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Click "[Window]" in the Document outline and then select "Edit Template => Edit a copy"

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Blend complies and gives me this control template.

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However, immediately the XAML is flagged as having errors.

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I figured "well, maybe this is just a designer issue. Maybe it will build." Nope.

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"The type reference cannot find a public type named 'WindowInstance'. "The name 'WindowInstance' does not exist in the namespace 'clr-namespace:Microsoft.VisualStudio.DesignTools.WpfDesigner.InstanceBuilders;assembly=Microsoft.VisualStudio.DesignTools.WpfDesigner"

Well, I've looked for "Microsoft.VisualStudio.DesignTools.WpfDesigner" on both NuGet and in the install folders and it doesn't seem to be there.

I've also read this solution, which mentions adding "Blend for Visual Studio SDK for .NET" in the Visual Studio 2017 installer under the "Individual Components" page. I've done that. Still I have the error.

I'm uncertain where Blend got the initial ControlTemplate from in the first place if it doesn't resolve to an assembly on my machine.

Regarding the actual solution... what I'm doing now is faking a window with a title bar (that has no buttons) and using the system brushes to make it look like a window with a title bar--but that isn't draggable... which is another problem to solve.

Really, why I can't do something as trivial as removing control buttons from a window is beyond me. I suppose there are philosophical reasons to not allow people to remove the close button on a window, but that shouldn't be some arbitrary call that a dev at Microsoft gets to make for me or anyone on my team.

Thank you for your assistance.

Chad.

Pavel Anikhouski
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Chad Lehman
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    Sorry for the off topic, but you can do that without using the `Blend` by specifying `WindowStyle="None"` and custom attached drag behaviour – Pavel Anikhouski Jul 21 '19 at 19:28
  • Thank you Pavel. That solves the draggable issue. Won't mark as solution simply because I want to see if a solution exists via Blend, but thank you all the same. – Chad Lehman Jul 22 '19 at 12:02

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