C# Displaying a image in a form that is non-blocking to the rest of my code

Question

I know this is a rather broad question, but have a class that has a method to display an image and would like to use that method in a different piece of code to open up the image, but not have that method call be blocking.

So if I had the following snippet somewhere in a piece of code:

ImageClass MyImage = new ImageClass();
MyImage.DisplayImage(@"C:\SomeImage.jpg");
Console.Writeline("This is the line after displaying the image");

I would basically want the image to display and then proceed on to the Console Writeline. Do I have to create a new thread or process to do this? Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Yes, you will need to use additional threads. I'm not as familiar with GDI, but you may need to run the non-UI code in a separate thread so that the UI code can run in the main UI thread. Something like the following:

ImageClass MyImage = new ImageClass();
MyImage.DisplayImage(@"C:\SomeImage.jpg");
ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(new WaitCallback(new delegate(object o) {
    Console.Writeline("This is the line after displaying the image");
}));

Answer 2

Yes, creating a new thread and calling MyImage.DisplayImage(@"C:\SomeImage.jpg"); in that thread is the best way to do it.

Answer 3

PictureBox.LoadAsync() will load w/o blocking.