ShowDialog makes app window disappear from windows' Alt-Tab list?

Question

i am new to WPF, and i am trying to open a modal dialog from inside my main window:

public partial class MainWindow : Window
{
    protected void OpenCommandExecuted(object target, ExecutedRoutedEventArgs e)
    {
        DataSearchWindow w = new DataSearchWindow();

        w.Owner = this;
        w.ShowDialog();
    }
    ...
}

and XAML for my DataSearchWindow looks like this:

<Window x:Class="DataSearchWindow"
        xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
        xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
        ShowInTaskbar='False'
        WindowStartupLocation='CenterOwner'
        WindowStyle='ToolWindow'
        ...>
...
</Window>

Everything works until I press Alt-Tab to switch to another application. When I do that my application disappears from the list shown when Alt-Tab is pressed. It is still in the taskbar and I can return to it using mouse, bu not with Alt-Tab. Has anyone seen this?

konstantin

Answer 1

This is because of the modal dialog - you cannot Alt-Tab back to the application until the dialog is closed. Since the WindowStyle is set as ToolWindow, it won't show up in Alt-Tab. However, if it were a regular window, the dialog window would show up in Alt-Tab.

Note that this isn't a WPF issue - it is consistent with, for example, a Windows Forms application.