Shadows in Windows (UWP) XAML Applications – Part 3 – DropShadowPanel

In Part 2 of this series I talked about how to create your own shadow using the DropShadow class. I mentioned that whilst it was easy enough to do, the DropShadow had to be created in code, rather than being applied in XAML. Well the good news is that the team building the Windows Community Toolkit say the same issue and have produced the DropShadowPanel which can be used to apply a shadow via XAML.

Let’s again use our two Rectangle series. I’m going to jump straight to the XAML that shows how to use the DropShadowPanel, complete with rounded corners and theme colour support.

<controls:DropShadowPanel BlurRadius="10"
                            ShadowOpacity="1"
                            Color="{ThemeResource ApplicationForegroundThemeColor}"
                            Margin="50"
                            VerticalAlignment="Bottom"
                            HorizontalAlignment="Left"
                            IsMasked="True">
    <Rectangle x:Name="Rectangle2"
                Fill="Turquoise"
                RadiusX="40"
                RadiusY="40"
                Height="200"
                Width="200" />
</controls:DropShadowPanel>

It’s worth noting here that the DropShadowPanel accepts a Color for the shadow, rather than a brush. As such I’ve had to register an additional theme resources.

var foregroundBrush = this.Resources["ApplicationForegroundThemeBrush"] as SolidColorBrush;
Resources["ApplicationForegroundThemeColor"] = foregroundBrush.Color;

And then of course we want to see what this looks like in action.

Note that the DropShadowPanel works in both light (left part of image) and dark (right part of image) themes

One last thing to note before I wrap up this post. You’ll notice in the above XAML that there is an attribute IsMasked that is set to True. This is actually the default value for this property, so could be excluded. However, I wanted to make note of it because it can be toggled to adjust the behaviour of the shadow. For example if I set this attribute to false, we see the following shadow being cast.

Clearly, in this scenario we want to set IsMasked to true so that we get the nice rounded corners in the shadow.

For anyone wanting to quickly apply a shadow in XAML, the DropShadowPanel from the Windows Community Toolkit has you covered.