Vista - Data Entry forms with WPF

I have a huge project coming up that will be a heavy duty data entry windows
app with over 30 screens. I am going to be using WCF and WF and I would
really like to use WPF. I have played around with WPF but I really miss
placing my controls on the form like in winforms. I understand the reason
behind using panels and grids and why you shouldn't use layout coordinates
like in winforms. Has anyone used WPF for heavy duty data entry forms? I
would realy like to see some examples of complicated data entry forms using
WPF.

Bill

Hi,

BillG wrote:If you really miss the "top,left" and "width,height" system, you can use
a Canvas as a container. I wouldn't recommend it though. After you
become confident with grids (especially) and other flow layout panels,
you won't want to go back, believe me.

For heavy UI design, the answer is Expression Blend. It's an amazing
designer. Alternatively, you can use Cider, which is the WPF designer
available in Visual Studio 2008. Don't use Cider in VS2005, it's no
good. In VS2008 it's quite OK.

I don't have an example to show you, but we do fairly complex layouts in
Blend, and it's a pleasure. Don't hesitate to nest panels to create very
complex layouts (for example a grid inside a stackpanel inside a grid,
etc...

Greetings,
Laurent
--
Laurent Bugnion [MVP ASP.NET]
Software engineering, Blog: http://www.galasoft.ch
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Not to parrot what Laurent just said, but I definitely agree that
using a Grid for layout is definitely more conducive to sanity. And
using Blend even moreso. Depending on the time-frame on your project.
I would also highly recommend using VS 2008 and Blend 2 for you
development. Or at the very least, VS 2005 and Blend. I do recommend
at least becoming familiar with XAML. But, I wouldn't start a complex
UI with a blank Xaml file. Just like I wouldn't start a complex web
layout with blank html.