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.

All controls can be tested on XnaFiddle, so feel free to try them out there.

Available Controls

• Button

• CheckBox

• ComboBox

• FrameworkElement

• Grid

• ItemsControl

• Label

• ListBox

• ListBoxItem

• Menu

• MenuItem

• PasswordBox

• RadioButton

• ScrollBar

• ScrollViewer

• StackPanel

• Slider

• Splitter

• TextBox

• Window