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Asked: 2026-05-11T02:20:35+00:00

I’m aware that in WPF you want to keep the sizes of controls as

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I’m aware that in WPF you want to keep the sizes of controls as flexible as possible so that they can flow and expand depending on their context (like in CSS).

But most of the code examples I come across are hard-coding sizes like the heights in this example:

<Grid.ColumnDefinitions>     <ColumnDefinition Width='0.5*'/>     <ColumnDefinition Width='0.5*'/> </Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <Grid.RowDefinitions>     <RowDefinition Height='31'/>     <RowDefinition Height='31'/>     <RowDefinition Height='31'/> </Grid.RowDefinitions>

Isn’t assigning a height of ’31’ to each row a bad practice that should not be emulated? Or is there a reason for this? Or could it be that authors create these examples in design view and just don’t clean up the hard coded heights.

Does anyone have any best practices regarding element sizing (especially with respect to using the * syntax) that people starting out with XAML can follow to develop good habits from the beginning?

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  1. Generally speaking, it’s a best practice to use dinamic sizes within XAML because as you say the concept of WPF is to be indipendent from fixed dimensions. In your particular example, i don’t know if it’s wanted from the writer, remember that there are still some cases involving hardcoded values (maybe a custom menu bar or a panel you want to keep consistent in it’s size). The notation ‘2*’ means that the value will be twice the value of other columns and thus, using the star notation in each column is not very usefull.

    If you’re looking for some examples, i can address you to these two sites (but if you search on google for ‘WPF star size’ or something like that you’ll find others). Plus, if you’re looking for a very good book about WPF, I can surely point you to Windows Presentation Foundation by Adam Nathan. It’s one of my favourite, it’s well written, full of coloured examples and covers every single aspect of WPF.

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