is WPF grid layout with * width or column, heavy for UIs?
<Grid>
<Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
<ColumnDefinition Width="334" />
<ColumnDefinition Width="Auto" />
</Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
<Grid.RowDefinitions>
<RowDefinition Height="Auto" />
<RowDefinition Height="1*" />
</Grid.RowDefinitions>
</Grid>
No, in general not. However if you have the combination of RowDefinitions with * and ColumnDefintions with *, this can lead to a performance penalty in big Grids. But this is very seldom. In fact, Grids with the length of * are one of the most used elements in WPF layouting.
Related
I am trying to build a 3x3 grid with XAML (for a Windows Phone application) where the center cell should be a square. I have tried the following but it does not work:
<Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="Transparent">
<Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
<ColumnDefinition Width="*" />
<ColumnDefinition Width="5*" x:Name="centerColumnDefinition" />
<ColumnDefinition Width="*" />
</Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
<Grid.RowDefinitions>
<RowDefinition Height="*" />
<RowDefinition Height="{Binding ElementName=centerColumnDefinition, Path=ActualWidth}" />
<RowDefinition Height="*" />
</Grid.RowDefinitions>
<Canvas Grid.Row="1" Grid.Column="1">
...
</Canvas>
</Grid>
Any suggestions for a working solution?
Greetings from Germany,
Tobias
Try this
<Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="Transparent">
<Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
<ColumnDefinition Width="*" />
<ColumnDefinition x:Name="centerColumnDefinition"
Width="5*" />
<ColumnDefinition Width="*" />
</Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
<Grid.RowDefinitions>
<RowDefinition Height="*" />
<RowDefinition Height="Auto" />
<RowDefinition Height="*" />
</Grid.RowDefinitions>
<Rectangle x:Name="CenterRect"
Grid.Row="1"
Grid.Column="1"
Height="{Binding ElementName=CenterRect,
Path=ActualWidth}"
HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" />
</Grid>
It can be tricky to reference column and row definitions because they are not "real" objects in the visual tree. This method avoids the problem by using a separate object in the center cell that can be used to get the proper sizes.
You should be able to replace the rectangle with another type of control if you want, or just leave it and embed your content inside the rectangle.
ActualHeight and ActualWidth are not set until the control is measured and arranged. Usually there is nothing in InitializeComponent() that causes a measure, so you will need to set the Height of your rows after it's calculated. You can do the re-sizing on Loaded event.
Source: https://stackoverflow.com/a/1695518/546896
In a user control, which I'm embedding in my main view,
I've defined the following layout:
<Grid x:Name="RootGrid" Margin="0,10,0,0" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch">
<Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
<ColumnDefinition Width="30*" />
<ColumnDefinition Width="20*" />
<ColumnDefinition Width="20*" />
<ColumnDefinition Width="30*" />
</Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
<Grid.RowDefinitions>
<RowDefinition Height="Auto" />
<RowDefinition Height="Auto" />
<RowDefinition Height="Auto" />
<RowDefinition Height="Auto" />
<RowDefinition Height="Auto" />
</Grid.RowDefinitions>
<Rectangle Margin="5,0,5,0"
Grid.RowSpan="5"
Grid.ColumnSpan="4"
Panel.ZIndex="-1"
Stroke="Blue"
Fill ="Black"
StrokeThickness="2"
/>
In the preview in Visual Studio, it looks like expected:
- that is the margin 5(for right adjustment) is taken into account.
Unfortunately, during runtime it is another story. I can set the right adjustment (margin) as high as I want, the right border of the rectangle is missing.
Can somebody tell me, what I am doing wrong here? I do not want to work with absolute width for the rectangle (that's working).
Update:
According to the proposal of Erno, I've used a border (and this is indeed much simpler):
<Border HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" Margin="10,0,10,0" Style="{StaticResource StatusPanelBorder}">
<Grid x:Name="RootGrid" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch">
<Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
<ColumnDefinition Width="30*" />
<ColumnDefinition Width="20*" />
<ColumnDefinition Width="20*" />
<ColumnDefinition Width="30*" />
</Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
<Grid.RowDefinitions>
<RowDefinition Height="Auto" />
<RowDefinition Height="Auto" />
<RowDefinition Height="Auto" />
<RowDefinition Height="Auto" />
<RowDefinition Height="Auto" />
</Grid.RowDefinitions>
But the issue is still the same.
I'm embedding this view in a main view, which has the following layout:
<Grid Width="1600" Height="Auto" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" Background="{StaticResource NoiseBackground}">
<Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
<ColumnDefinition Width="30*" />
<ColumnDefinition Width="90*" />
<ColumnDefinition Width="40*" />
</Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
<Grid.RowDefinitions>
<RowDefinition Height="600" />
<RowDefinition Height="100" />
</Grid.RowDefinitions>
The subview is embedded into the last column of the grid.
If I do not use the 'Stretch' alignment it works, but I want to 'stretch' the UI elements.
Second Update:
The issue was just that the shell view had a smaller width. Problem solved!
The best way to add a border to a grid is to take a border and nest a grid inside of it:
<Border>
<Grid>
...
</Grid>
</Border>
This way the grid and the border will resize the way you probably want, you can control the margins and you do not have to keep the textblocks' margins in sync with the rectangle's border.
EDIT
Looking at the xaml you added to the question I guess you set the width of the window to 1600. If so, the width of the Grid that you also set to 1600 doesn't fit because the width of the window INCLUDES the left and right borders. So forcing the grid's width to 1600 will cut it off at the right.
My advice: do not use hard-coded sizes, use star-sizes for columns and rows and use maximized for windows; Grids will stretch their contents automatically.
I designed my page to be 4:3 scalable and I'd like to have my grid to scale to 4:3 on any screen.
For example, on a 1900x1200, my grid will scale to 1600x1200 and we'll have 150px on each side of my grid. How can i manage to have this behavior ?
I've started with the following lines :
<Grid>
<Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
<ColumnDefinition Width="*" />
<ColumnDefinition Width="1024*" />
<ColumnDefinition Width="*" />
</Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
<Grid.RowDefinitions>
<RowDefinition Height="*"/>
<RowDefinition Height="768*"/>
<RowDefinition Height="*"/>
</Grid.RowDefinitions>
<Grid Grid.Row="1" Grid.Column="1" Name="my_grid" />
</Grid>
But I don't see how to manage the 4:3 thing. I'd like to force my grid to stretch until it has the highest 4:3 resolution possible and then let the free space on the sides.
Do you think I can manage to do this only in WPF ?
Thanks
You could use the ViewBox control. Design your XAML as you have done and place it inside it. The ViewBox will scale to fit the content to the available size. It will not resize the content so everything (ratios, width, etc.) will be left intact.
See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.controls.viewbox.aspx
Thanks to Sascha i did :
<Viewbox Name="grid_jeu" Stretch="Uniform" HorizontalAlignment="Center" VerticalAlignment="Center" Grid.Column="1" Grid.Row="1" >
<MyControl Name="my_grid" />
</Viewbox>
My Control is designed this way :
<Grid>
<Grid.RowDefinitions>
<RowDefinition Height="32" MaxHeight="32"/>
<RowDefinition Height="72" MaxHeight="72"/>
<RowDefinition Height="10" MaxHeight="10"/>
<RowDefinition Height="*"/>
<RowDefinition Height="20" MaxHeight="20"/>
<RowDefinition Height="90" MaxHeight="90"/>
<RowDefinition Height="32" MaxHeight="32"/>
</Grid.RowDefinitions>
</Grid>
I'd like to have only one row and one column which scale. As you can see I tried to put "MaxHeight" and "MaxWidth" to avoid my rows to scale but it doesn't work. When I launch my application I have my 309px column which scales to 420.
I would like to define two columns. Second one 1280px wide and the first one the rest of unused pixels. How to do it?
<Grid>
<Grid.RowDefinitions>
<RowDefinition Height="1*" />
<RowDefinition Height="9*" />
</Grid.RowDefinitions>
<Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
<ColumnDefinition Width="REST OF THE WIDHT" />
<ColumnDefinition Width="1280" />
</Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
</Grid>
You were on to the right idea with your RowDefinition
<Grid>
<Grid.RowDefinitions>
<RowDefinition Height="1*" />
<RowDefinition Height="9*" />
</Grid.RowDefinitions>
<Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
<ColumnDefinition Width="*" />
<ColumnDefinition Width="1280" />
</Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
</Grid>
Star sizing basically tells the layout engine how you would like to divide up the space available to the parent element amount the children, in terms of proportions.
Here are a couple articles that may help:
Star Sizing
WPF Tutorial
Are you sure you want hard coded widths? Resize your browser while running it and see how it looks. If you use "Auto" for one column or row and then "1*" for the other, it will fill the "Auto" with what is needed and then the rest goes to the second one.
I would think this might work better for you:
<Grid>
<Grid.RowDefinitions>
<RowDefinition Height="Auto" />
<RowDefinition Height="1*" />
</Grid.RowDefinitions>
<Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
<ColumnDefinition Width="Auto" />
<ColumnDefinition Width="1*" />
</Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
</Grid>
Then you start to make use of ScrollViewers for the content that might be bigger than its container.
I have an System.Windows.Controls.AutoCompleteBox with a fixed width.
The width should dynamically grow based on the content.
How can I achieve this.
Thanks for your help
You can achieve it by placing the AutoCompleteBox in a Grid.Column with Width="Auto". Here's an example:
<Grid>
<Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
<ColumnDefinition Width="Auto" MinWidth="30" />
<ColumnDefinition />
</Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
<Grid.RowDefinitions>
<RowDefinition Height="Auto"/>
</Grid.RowDefinitions>
<toolkit:AutoCompleteBox />
</Grid>