Changing the cursor in WPF sometimes works, sometimes doesn't

Question

On several of my usercontrols, I change the cursor by using

this.Cursor = Cursors.Wait;

when I click on something.

Now I want to do the same thing on a WPF page on a button click. When I hover over my button, the cursor changes to a hand, but when I click it, it doesn't change to the wait cursor. I wonder if this has something to do with the fact that it's a button, or because this is a page and not a usercontrol? This seems like weird behavior.

Answer 1

Do you need the cursor to be a "wait" cursor only when it's over that particular page/usercontrol? If not, I'd suggest using Mouse.OverrideCursor:

Mouse.OverrideCursor = Cursors.Wait;
try
{
    // do stuff
}
finally
{
    Mouse.OverrideCursor = null;
}

This overrides the cursor for your application rather than just for a part of its UI, so the problem you're describing goes away.

Answer 2

One way we do this in our application is using IDisposable and then with using(){} blocks to ensure the cursor is reset when done.

public class OverrideCursor : IDisposable
{

  public OverrideCursor(Cursor changeToCursor)
  {
    Mouse.OverrideCursor = changeToCursor;
  }

  #region IDisposable Members

  public void Dispose()
  {
    Mouse.OverrideCursor = null;
  }

  #endregion
}

and then in your code:

using (OverrideCursor cursor = new OverrideCursor(Cursors.Wait))
{
  // Do work...
}

The override will end when either: the end of the using statement is reached or; if an exception is thrown and control leaves the statement block before the end of the statement.

Update

To prevent the cursor flickering you can do:

public class OverrideCursor : IDisposable
{
  static Stack<Cursor> s_Stack = new Stack<Cursor>();

  public OverrideCursor(Cursor changeToCursor)
  {
    s_Stack.Push(changeToCursor);

    if (Mouse.OverrideCursor != changeToCursor)
      Mouse.OverrideCursor = changeToCursor;
  }

  public void Dispose()
  {
    s_Stack.Pop();

    Cursor cursor = s_Stack.Count > 0 ? s_Stack.Peek() : null;

    if (cursor != Mouse.OverrideCursor)
      Mouse.OverrideCursor = cursor;
  }

}