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Programming WPF, 2nd Edition
book

Programming WPF, 2nd Edition

by Chris Sells, Ian Griffiths
August 2007
Intermediate to advanced content levelIntermediate to advanced
864 pages
25h 52m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Programming WPF, 2nd Edition

Grid

Consider the document Properties dialog from Internet Explorer shown in Figure 3-8. Notice how the main area of the form is arranged as two columns. The column on the left contains labels, and the column in the middle contains information.

Document Properties dialog

Figure 3-8. Document Properties dialog

Achieving this kind of layout with any of the panels we've looked at so far is difficult, because they are not designed with two-dimensional alignment in mind. We could try to use nesting—Example 3-6 shows a vertical StackPanel with three rows, each with a horizontal StackPanel.

Example 3-6. Ineffective use of StackPanel

<StackPanel Orientation="Vertical" Background="Beige">
  <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal">
    <TextBlock>Protocol:</TextBlock>
    <TextBlock>HyperText Transfer Protocol</TextBlock>
  </StackPanel>
  <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal">
        <TextBlock>Type:</TextBlock>
    <TextBlock>HTML Document</TextBlock>
  </StackPanel>
  <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal">
    <TextBlock>Connection:</TextBlock>
   <TextBlock>Not Encrypted</TextBlock>
  </StackPanel>
</StackPanel>

The result, shown in Figure 3-9, is not what we want at all. Each row has been arranged independently, so we don't get the two columns we were hoping for.

Inappropriate use of StackPanel

Figure 3-9. Inappropriate use of StackPanel

The Grid panel solves this problem. Rather than working a ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9780596510374Supplemental ContentErrata Page