How to switch images in a C# WPF application?

Question

I am trying to make an application that switches between an image of the heads sign of a coin and the tails side of a coin. However, every time I press either the \"heads\" butt

Answer 1

Clemens is absolutely right, and his second alternative is far superior because it doesn't re-load the bitmaps each time you flip them. However if I may suggest an even better alternative (IMHO) to what you're doing, instead of changing the Source of the coinImage each time, you might instead want to have two Images, for example, coinHeadsImage and coinTailsImage, and flip their respective Visibility properties in those Click handlers. Wrap both Images in their own common Grid so that they are overlapping in the visual tree. I'm not 100% certain, but I believe changing the Visibility of the Images would be more efficient speed-wise than setting the Source property, and either way, it would be better architecture because you could bind the Visibility properties directly to a hypothetical IsHeads property in your code-behind or view model, using appropriate converters of course.

Also, any time you use the as syntax, you generally should check the result for null. Unlike a simple type cast, you won't get an exception if the object cannot covert to the desired type when you use as. Had you checked for null you would have caught your error there.