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Introduction to WPF Layout

Why layout is so important

Best Practices

Vertical and Horizontal Alignment

Margin and Padding

Width and Height

Content Overflow Handling


Why layout is so important

Layout of controls is critical to an applications usability. Arranging controls based on fixed pixel coordinates may work for an limited enviroment, but as soon as you want to use it on different screen resolutions or with different font sizes it will fail. WPF provides a rich set built-in layout panels that help you to avoid the common pitfalls.

These are the five most popular layout panels of WPF:

Best Practices

  • Avoid fixed positions - use the Alignment properties in combination with Margin to position elements in a panel
  • Avoid fixed sizes - set the Width and Height of elements to Auto whenever possible.
  • Don't abuse the canvas panel to layout elements. Use it only for vector graphics.
  • Use a StackPanel to layout buttons of a dialog
  • Use a GridPanel to layout a static data entry form. Create a Auto sized column for the labels and a Star sized column for the TextBoxes.
  • Use an ItemControl with a grid panel in a DataTemplate to layout dynamic key value lists. Use the SharedSize feature to synchronize the label widths.

Vertical and Horizontal Alignment

Use the VerticalAlignment and HorizontalAlignmant properties to dock the controls to one or multiple sides of the panel. The following illustrations show how the sizing behaves with the different combinations.

Margin and Padding

The Margin and Padding properties can be used to reserve some space around of within the control.

  • The Margin is the extra space around the control.
  • The Padding is extra space inside the control.
  • The Padding of an outer control is the Margin of an inner control.

Height and Width

Alltough its not a recommended way, all controls provide a Height and Width property to give an element a fixed size. A better way is to use the MinHeight, MaxHeight, MinWidth and MaxWidth properties to define a acceptable range.
If you set the width or height to Auto the control sizes itself to the size of the content.

Overflow Handling

Clipping

Layout panels typically clip those parts of child elements that overlap the border of the panel. This behavior can be controlled by setting the ClipToBounds property to true or false.

Scrolling

When the content is too big to fit the available size, you can wrap it into a ScrollViewer. The ScrollViewer uses two scroll bars to choose the visible area.

The visibility of the scrollbars can be controlled by the vertical and horizontal ScrollbarVisibility properties.

<ScrollViewer>
    <StackPanel>
        <Button Content="First Item" />
        <Button Content="Second Item" />
        <Button Content="Third Item" />
    </StackPanel>
</ScrollViewer>
 

Related Articles

MSDN - The Layout System



Last modified: 2009-05-27 08:38:49
Copyright (c) by Christian Moser, 2011.

 Comments on this article

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Mustansar
Commented on 2.February 2011
Assalam-o-alaikum
A lot help for beginners, I am gona present it to my fellows tomorrow :)
Vandip
Commented on 3.March 2011
Awesome buddy ! Thankz a ton ! :)
Vandip
Commented on 3.March 2011
Awesome buddy ! Thankz a ton ! :)
gdemmi
Commented on 5.March 2011
Awewsome article!
Johnson
Commented on 10.March 2011
Very good article on layouts, thanks
lalita patil
Commented on 25.March 2011
We learnt lot of things from this article,its so nice
Sanjay Patolia
Commented on 26.March 2011
Nice one it really gives good idea about using layout panels and use best practise out of it. :)
raja
Commented on 27.March 2011
hai its very good article
rashmi
Commented on 17.April 2011
Small, crisp. Nice one. Thanks
Om Prakash
Commented on 21.April 2011
Good, nice,helpful article......
Thanks Sir G

Regard :
Om Prakash Bishnoi
Muhammad Hanif
Commented on 20.May 2011
Great effort. Easy to understand.....Learning with out boring.....Really interesting.
manmohan
Commented on 6.June 2011
Great stuff to make us understand the usefullness of layout panel in a simpler way.
rahul
Commented on 8.June 2011
nice
Raj
Commented on 14.June 2011
nice article
zeceTeddy
Commented on 15.June 2011
Very informative post. Thanks for taking the time to share your view with us.
Anubhav Ranjan
Commented on 29.July 2011
Good article. Must read before starting development in WPF.
AS
Commented on 2.August 2011
Nice and clear for beginners
expert
Commented on 16.August 2011
good job...this helped me a lot
Jo
Commented on 17.August 2011
Could you please explain me how to add a toolbar into a grid by writing code in .xaml.cs file?
Jo
Commented on 17.August 2011
Could you please explain me how to add a toolbar into a grid by writing code in .xaml.cs file?
Jo
Commented on 17.August 2011
Could you please explain me how to add a toolbar into a grid by writing code in .xaml.cs file?
Jo
Commented on 17.August 2011
Could you please explain me how to add a toolbar into a grid by writing code in .xaml.cs file?
Jo
Commented on 17.August 2011
Could you please explain me how to add a toolbar into a grid by writing code in .xaml.cs file?
Saj
Commented on 1.September 2011
Hi Mate,
Is there a way to add WPF Window at a desired position, like if you have a panel when user clicks on buttons the new window opens in the middle panel or desired panel rather than coming up as New Window (more like MDI window approach)

Thanks
MEE
Commented on 23.September 2011
Excellent

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