Chapter 17. Layout with Custom Panels

In This Chapter

Communication Between Parents and Children Creating a 2007 Office-Like RibbonPanel

Chapter 6, “Layout with Panels,” examined the variety of panels included with WPF. If none of the built-in panels do exactly what you want, you have the option of writing your own panel. Of course, with all the flexibility of the built-in panels, the layout properties on child elements (discussed in Chapter 5, “Sizing, Positioning, and Transforming Elements”), plus the ability to embed panels within other panels to create arbitrarily complex layout, it’s unlikely you’re going to need a custom panel. Actually, you never need a custom panel; with enough procedural code, you can achieve any layout with just a Canvas. It’s just a matter of how easy and automatic you want to be able to repetitively apply certain types of layout.