Callisto Migration Tip: Use CharacterEllipsis

Frankly I’m going to be honest and say I’m not sure why it took us so long to add this capability to TextBlock, especially given that the support in Callisto provided via DynamicTextBlock was originally done in Silverlight 2. O_O. Well, Robby can rest well now knowing that we no longer have to depend on his contributions to Callisto.

Example of use DynamicTextBlock on bottom

Here’s the quick migration tip.

Change back to TextBlock

The DynamicTextBlock served one purpose, to provide trimming at the character level rather than the word level. The implementation of DynamicTextBlock was done using a ContentControl which, frankly, was probably too heavy handed for the usage here. However since TextBlock is sealed this was necessary. The usage for having this was simple:

<callisto:DynamicTextBlock Text="Some long text here" TextWrapping="NoWrap" />

And changing this to provide platform-supported trimming is simple as well:

<TextBlock Text="Some long text here" TextTrimming="CharacterEllipsis" />

Yep, that’s it.

Summary

This migration should be quick and painless. Using the platform’s TextBlock will allow you to benefit from the new typography settings provided in Windows 8.1 (like TextTrimming=”Clip” as well) in conjunction with this as well as better global text support. I’m thankful we were able to add this into the platform finally.

Hope this helps!