wpf - Prevent UI from freezing without additional threads

Question

What solutions do I have if I want to prevent the UI from freezing while I deserialize a large number of UI elements in WPF? I'm getting errors complainig that the objects belong on the UI Thread when I'm trying to load them in another thread. So, what options do I have to prevent the Vista "Program not responding" error while I'm loading my UI data? Can I rely on a single-threaded solution, or am I missing something regarding perhaps multiple UI Threads?

Answer 1

If you only use a single thread then the UI will freeze while you do any amount of processing.

If you use a BackgroundWorker thread you'll have more control over what happens & when.

To update the UI you need to use Dispatcher.Invoke from your background thread to marshal the call across the thread boundary.

Dispatcher.Invoke(DispatcherPriority.Background,
                  new Action(() => this.TextBlock.Text = "Processing");