Crazy question - is there any way to extract the display of a windowinto an image file?

Just like the subject says. I've got this idea for extracting an image
(.bmp, .jpg, .pnf, whatever) that looks like the display of a window and
putting it at the content of a WPF button. Does anyone know of a
possible way to do that? I was hoping I could actually nest the window
directly as the button content, but that ends up with the following
runtime exception:

{"Window must be the root of the tree. Cannot add window as a Logical or
Visual child of any Visual."}


Thanks!
Jason

I think you are looking for VisualBrush. Unfortunately, if you try to reference
a visual earlier in the tree you end up in an infinite loop. It doesn't look
like you will be able to use this to get an image of the entire window. Depending
on your exact scenario this simple example may help:

<Window x:Class="WindowsApplication.Window1"
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/avalon/2005"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/xaml/2005">
<DockPanel>
<StackPanel Name="MainWindow">
<Button>Button 1</Button>
<Button>Button 2</Button>
<Button>Button 3</Button>
</StackPanel>
<Button>
<Rectangle Width="300" Height="300">
<Rectangle.Fill>
<VisualBrush Visual="{Binding ElementName=MainWindow}" />
</Rectangle.Fill>
</Rectangle>
</Button>
</DockPanel>
</Window>

> Just like the subject says. I've got this idea for extracting an
> image (.bmp, .jpg, .pnf, whatever) that looks like the display of a
> window and putting it at the content of a WPF button. Does anyone
> know of a possible way to do that? I was hoping I could actually nest
> the window directly as the button content, but that ends up with the
> following runtime exception:
>
> {"Window must be the root of the tree. Cannot add window as a Logical
> or Visual child of any Visual."}
>
> Thanks!
> Jason