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 | |
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Commented on 2.February 2011 |
Assalam-o-alaikum
A lot help for beginners, I am gona present it to my fellows tomorrow :)
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Vandip | |
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Commented on 3.March 2011 |
Awesome buddy ! Thankz a ton ! :)
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Vandip | |
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Commented on 3.March 2011 |
Awesome buddy ! Thankz a ton ! :)
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gdemmi | |
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Commented on 5.March 2011 |
Awewsome article!
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Johnson | |
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Commented on 10.March 2011 |
Very good article on layouts, thanks
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lalita patil | |
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Commented on 25.March 2011 |
We learnt lot of things from this article,its so nice
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Sanjay Patolia | |
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Commented on 26.March 2011 |
Nice one it really gives good idea about using layout panels and use best practise out of it. :)
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raja | |
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Commented on 27.March 2011 |
hai its very good article
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rashmi | |
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Commented on 17.April 2011 |
Small, crisp. Nice one. Thanks
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Om Prakash | |
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Commented on 21.April 2011 |
Good, nice,helpful article......
Thanks Sir G
Regard :
Om Prakash Bishnoi
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Muhammad Hanif | |
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Commented on 20.May 2011 |
Great effort. Easy to understand.....Learning with out boring.....Really interesting.
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manmohan | |
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Commented on 6.June 2011 |
Great stuff to make us understand the usefullness of layout panel in a simpler way.
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rahul | |
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Commented on 8.June 2011 |
nice
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Raj | |
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Commented on 14.June 2011 |
nice article
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zeceTeddy | |
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Commented on 15.June 2011 |
Very informative post. Thanks for taking the time to share your view with us.
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Anubhav Ranjan | |
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Commented on 29.July 2011 |
Good article. Must read before starting development in WPF.
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AS | |
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Commented on 2.August 2011 |
Nice and clear for beginners
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expert | |
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Commented on 16.August 2011 |
good job...this helped me a lot
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Jo | |
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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?
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Jo | |
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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?
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Jo | |
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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?
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Jo | |
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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?
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Jo | |
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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?
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Saj | |
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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
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MEE | |
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Commented on 23.September 2011 |
Excellent
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