I’ve found a very simple way to enable Windows Explorer like drag/drop behaviour when having multiple items selected. The solution replaces the common ListBox
with a little derived shim that replaces the ListBoxItem
with a more intelligent version. This way, we can encapsulate the click state at the right level and call into the protected selection machinery of the ListBox
. Here is the relevant class. For a complete example, see my repo on github.
public class ListBoxEx : ListBox
{
protected override DependencyObject GetContainerForItemOverride()
{
return new ListBoxItemEx();
}
class ListBoxItemEx : ListBoxItem
{
private bool _deferSelection = false;
protected override void OnMouseLeftButtonDown(MouseButtonEventArgs e)
{
if (e.ClickCount == 1 && IsSelected)
{
// the user may start a drag by clicking into selected items
// delay destroying the selection to the Up event
_deferSelection = true;
}
else
{
base.OnMouseLeftButtonDown(e);
}
}
protected override void OnMouseLeftButtonUp(MouseButtonEventArgs e)
{
if (_deferSelection)
{
try
{
base.OnMouseLeftButtonDown(e);
}
finally
{
_deferSelection = false;
}
}
base.OnMouseLeftButtonUp(e);
}
protected override void OnMouseLeave(MouseEventArgs e)
{
// abort deferred Down
_deferSelection = false;
base.OnMouseLeave(e);
}
}
}