Laying Out Windows Phone ListBoxes in 4 Steps
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Join For FreeA listbox can be a very boring display surface, but it doesn’t have to be. Ok, so it may never be exciting. At least we can create a more flexible output.
The first element you need to learn about his the ItemTemplate which is in turn composed of a DataTemplate. As this combo implies it is bound to each item/data row. We will start organizing your base layout with a Grid control.
Within the
Grid you can add a RowDefintions group. A RowDefinition helps when you
want components to be stacked for a particular data row. The main
attribute for a RowDefinition is it’s Height. There is no name
attribute, but we will get to that point toward the end of this article.
<Grid.RowDefinitions> <RowDefinition Height="Auto"/> <RowDefinition Height="*"/> </Grid.RowDefinitions>
The other main layout organization is kept in the ColumnDefinitions
group. ColumnDefinition elements are best used for defining the width. I
only created column definitions where they differ from full width of
the row. In the case of this example the first of the two rows.
<Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <ColumnDefinition Width="300"/> <ColumnDefinition Width="90"/> </Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
Now that you have all of definition setup lets put it to use. In
this example we have a project list. Each project has a name, a score
and a description. We will add a group of TextBlock controls for each
data element. They do not need to be in any particular order and I will
show why next.
Now we can assign row and column associations to each TextBlock. Both
rows and columns are assigned using a zero based index from the
sequence they are defined in the XMAL. At this point the layout is set.
Grid.Row="0" Grid.Column="0"
The last thing we need to do is Databind the components of the list.
Set the Text attribute of each TextBlock to an appropriate field of the
object your are binding to each object.
Text="{Binding ProjectName}"
The final code is listed below.
<ListBox Height="330" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="32,20,0,0" Name="listEvaluations" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="397" ItemsSource="{Binding}" MouseEnter="listEvaluations_MouseEnter"> <ListBox.ItemTemplate> <DataTemplate> <Grid> <Grid.RowDefinitions> <RowDefinition Height="Auto"/> <RowDefinition Height="*"/> </Grid.RowDefinitions> <Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <ColumnDefinition Width="300"/> <ColumnDefinition Width="90"/> </Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <TextBlock HorizontalAlignment="Left" Grid.Row="0" Grid.Column="0" Name="ProjectName" Text="{Binding ProjectName}" FontSize="{StaticResource PhoneFontSizeLarge}"></TextBlock> <TextBlock HorizontalAlignment="Right" Grid.Row="0" Grid.Column="1" Name="ProjectTotal" Text="{Binding Total}" FontSize="{StaticResource PhoneFontSizeLarge}"></TextBlock> <TextBlock Name="ProjectDescription" Grid.Row="1" Text="{Binding Description}" FontSize="{StaticResource PhoneFontSizeSmall}"></TextBlock> </Grid> </DataTemplate> </ListBox.ItemTemplate> </ListBox>
And here is what the result looks like.
There is a lot more you can do with this approach by using other
controls in your template, but this should give you the basic concepts
you need.
Source: http://geekswithblogs.net/tmurphy/archive/2011/09/02/laying-out-windows-phone-7-listboxes.aspx
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