Alternative to MDI in WPF?

Question

Hopefully this is an appropriate question...
I'm playing around with WPF for the first time with the ultimate goal of eventually converting our program from a winforms app to a WPF app. Our app currently uses a MDI form as the main form, to allow for multiple open windows to display data and such.

In WPF, whats the best practice for displaying multiple sets of data?
I've seen the tab method in VS 2010, but is this the best way? What other methods are there?

We are only in the early stages of figuring out what we want the updated program to behave like, and I don't know much about WPF yet, so if there is a better question I should be asking, let me know. Or if this should be a wiki question.

Matěj Zábský · Accepted Answer · 2011-04-18T18:45:11.320

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You could use AvalonDock - it creates interface of dockable sub-windows similar to Visual Studio. It also allows for floating windows inside the application (and these windows can optionally be docked to create tabbed interface).

Generally, I consider such dockable interfaces to be much better than traditional MDI.

edited Apr 18 '11 at 18:45

answered Apr 18 '11 at 14:13

Matěj Zábský

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score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 18 '11 at 14:38

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My company is currently migrating an MDI MFC app to WPF and we're using SandDock. I've been happy with it so far. They have a demo application and a free 30 day trial so you can evaluate it to see if it fits your needs.

answered Apr 18 '11 at 14:38

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score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 18 '11 at 15:03

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I don't know if you are looking for a control or design guidelines. Microsoft has a free Framework called Prism for modularized large applications which supports different guidelines also for your business case.

http://karlshifflett.wordpress.com/2011/03/25/new-book-available-developers-guide-to-microsoft-prism-4/

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg406140.aspx

Prism Download here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=3453ab2b-2067-41e4-b087-312d8385cf1b&displaylang=en

Even if you are only looking for a control to plugin and you want to do serious WPF development you should at least consider checking out those links...

answered Apr 18 '11 at 15:03

silverfighter

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I'm trying out Prism, but I'm not really sure what I'm doing yet. The documentation is a little hard to wrap my head around. Any good getting started tutorials available? – AndyD273 Apr 19 '11 at 16:55
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Here is a series of screencasts that should get you up and running its silverlight and previous version of prism but it can be a start because the concepts still apply http://mtaulty.com/CommunityServer/blogs/mike_taultys_blog/archive/2009/10/27/prism-and-silverlight-screencasts-on-channel-9.aspx – silverfighter Apr 19 '11 at 17:14

Alternative to MDI in WPF?

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