Controls

Introduction

This section covers the Gum Forms controls — a set of interactive UI controls built on top of the Gum layout system. Forms controls combine visual appearance with built-in interaction logic, making it straightforward to build game UI without writing low-level input handling code.

How Forms Controls Differ from Raw GraphicalUiElement Usage

When you use a raw GraphicalUiElement (or one of the standard visuals like SpriteRuntime or ColoredRectangleRuntime), you get full layout control but no interaction logic. Forms controls add:

• Built-in interaction logic — buttons respond to clicks, text boxes accept keyboard input, list boxes handle selection, and so on.

• Default visuals — each control ships with a default appearance so it works out of the box without a Gum project file.

• State machines — controls automatically transition between visual states (e.g., Enabled, Disabled, Highlighted, Pushed) in response to user input.

FrameworkElement — The Base Class

Every Forms control inherits from FrameworkElement. It provides the common foundation shared by all controls, including:

• IsEnabled — disables a control so it stops receiving input.

• IsFocused — tracks whether the control currently has keyboard focus.

• Layout shortcuts (X, Y, Width, Height, Anchor, Dock) that forward to the underlying Visual property.

• Data binding support via SetBinding and BindingContext.

For details on these shared members, see the FrameworkElement section.