Question

In WinForms it was relatively easy to swap out Panels at runtime for other panels. In WPF this seems to be rather more complex (especially from XAML).

Can anyone provide clear guidance on the ‘best practice’ way of swapping gui elements at runtime (think pages in a wizard type situation).

Many thanks.

Answer 1

The underlying concepts of WinFomrs and WPF is different. In WPF it is not advisable to play around with UIElements(Controls) directly. Make use of DataBinding/DataContexts and just operate on the data and then the UI will function accordingly. This concept is all about WPF MVVM pattern. You can look in to some MVVM samples and try it before doing more complex WPF projects.

A simple example, Suppose you need to dynamically disply a number of items in a ListBox, The typical winform way to do this is to create Items and add directly to the ListBox. But in WPF you create an ObservableCollection<Customer> and bind that to the ListBox.ItemsSource. then define a DataTemplate for Customer Data Type, this ensure the WPF system to understand how a Collection of Customers being displayed in the application. So when you add a new customer instance to the collection, magically your ListBox will get updated with one more item. Seems pretty straight forward and a very loosely coupled way of Data and View right?.
Best wishes on your WPF learning. –

http://www.bing.com/search?q=WPF+MVVM

So the high level clue to your question is, make the View appropriately for the Data and when Data/Property Change happens, WPF will take care of changing the Panels/Controls. So it is really simple than WinForms way when you approach from the Data and View perceptive.