Lesson 39 - WPF - Container Controls

In the previous lesson, WPF - Menu and Dialog Controls, we continued with our overview of WPF controls and showed how to use application menus and dialogs. Today's and the last tutorial on the basic WPF controls is dedicated to containers.

Containers

Containers are controls that contain other controls. We already know at least the Grid and StackPanel. We use them to align controls in the form according to the rules of the used container type.

Representatives of these containers in WPF are:

• Canvas
• DockPanel
• Grid
• StackPanel
• TabControl
• WrapPanel

Canvas

Canvas is the simplest container. Elements are placed in it using the Left, Top, Right, and Bottom properties, as shown in the following example. The element position is then specified by the distance from these edges. The underlying elements are stacked in the order in which they are defined. We use Canvas mainly for drawing, e.g. some diagrams using geometric shapes or pictures.

Example

XAML

<Canvas Background="LightSteelBlue">
    <Button Canvas.Left="10" Canvas.Top="10" Content="Top left"/>
    <Button Canvas.Right="10" Canvas.Top="10" Content="Top right"/>
    <Button Canvas.Left="10" Canvas.Bottom="10" Content="Bottom left"/>
    <Button Canvas.Right="10" Canvas.Bottom="10" Content="Bottom right"/>

    <Rectangle Fill="Lime" Canvas.Left="130"
       Canvas.Top="70" Width="50" Height="50"
 
 

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