Question

The default behavior of the WPF Tabcontrol is to place the Tab Headers adjacent to each other, without any empty space in between. What if I wanted to specify a gap between the headers? Do I have to define a control template for this? I’m relatively new to WFP and any help is appreciated.

Thanks

Answer 1

I believe you will need to define a custom control template for the TabItem, maybe even one for the TabControl. Here is an example of a TabItem that uses a spacer for some separation.

<Style
    x:Key="SpacedTab"
    TargetType="{x:Type TabItem}">
    <Setter
        Property="Template">
        <Setter.Value>
            <ControlTemplate
                TargetType="{x:Type TabItem}">
                <Border
                    x:Name="Spacer"
                    Width="Auto"
                    Height="Auto"
                    Padding="0 0 5 0"
                    Margin="0 0 0 0"
                    BorderBrush="Transparent"
                    BorderThickness="0">
                    <Border
                        x:Name="Border"
                        MinWidth="150"
                        Width="Auto"
                        Height="30"
                        Background="Gray"
                        BorderBrush="DarkGray"
                        BorderThickness="0,0,0,0"
                        CornerRadius="6,6,0,0"
                        Cursor="Hand"
                        VerticalAlignment="Bottom">
                        <ContentPresenter
                            x:Name="ContentSite"
                            TextElement.FontSize="10pt"
                            TextElement.FontFamily="Arial"
                            TextElement.Foreground="Black"
                            VerticalAlignment="Center"
                            HorizontalAlignment="Center"
                            ContentSource="Header"
                            Margin="8,3,8,3"
                            Width="Auto"
                            Height="Auto" />
                    </Border>
                </Border>
            </ControlTemplate>
        </Setter.Value>
    </Setter>
</Style>

Hopefully that is a nudge in the right direction; you will still need to add that as a style resource and reference it from your TabControl -> TabItem.