Bring closer Items in ItemsControl

Answer 1

Your TextBlock has a height set of 40 units. If you remove that attribute altogether, you'll see the items spaced more naturally.

So your XAML would look more like this:

<Grid>
    <ItemsControl Name="announcmentsListBox" ItemsSource="{Binding}">
        <ItemsControl.ItemTemplate>
            <DataTemplate>
                <StackPanel>
                    <TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=Text}" />
                    <Button />
                </StackPanel>
            </DataTemplate>
        </ItemsControl.ItemTemplate>
    </ItemsControl>
</Grid>

Answer 2

I would advise you to use Mole visualizer to examine the generated items. Mole 4.2 can be downloaded from http://karlshifflett.wordpress.com/mole-for-visual-studio/

Just need to copy "Mole.Visualizer.dll" to appropriate visualizer folder.

If you are developing on Vista and are running with Elevated Security enabled, you must install Mole in the following directory.

* {VS Install path}\Common7\Packages\Debugger\Visualizers

All others download and unzip the above package. Copy the file in the Release package to either:

* My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Visualizers {VS2005}
* My Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Visualizers {VS2008}

You can set a break point somewhere in the code which is easily accessible and then start the Mole visualizer on some object. Navigate the visual tree to the itemscontrol. Look for values in Margin and Padding for the generated TextBlocks. It will also tell you whether the values are inherited or local etc.

Answer 3

Use a Padding set to 0. Also, you can set Negative Margins which in many cases is the only way to coerce text into certain layouts (where Padding doesn't fit the bill, and container layout is non-overridable.)

You can also implement your own items panel template and redefine the layout of each item to compensate for the the padding being introduced, but this shouldn't be necessary. It would, however, afford you control over layout calculation for all items so that you can best-fit each item (and even go one step further and implement crazy new item layouts such as a carousel, as has been demoed by many pre-RTM videos of WPF/Avalon.)

Hope that helps, it's what I do.