xaml - WPF: Canvas mouse events not firing on empty space

Question

I have set mouse events on a Canvas as follows:

<Canvas MouseUp="CanvasUp" MouseDown="CanvasDown" MouseMove="CanvasMove">
...
</Canvas>

But these are active only on the child elements like Image and Rectangle, not on the empty space. How can I solve this?

Answer 1

A control with no background color set (explicitly or through styles etc) will default to having a background color of null - making it not hit-testable.

If you set the background to "Transparent" (or anything other than null ({x:Null})) then it will be able to pick up the mouse events