I always use a Canvas when I'm laying out my visuals usually because I will need adjust the RenderTransform.TranslateTransform to animate in some way. A colleague recently told me that unless I explicitly need to animate I should always use the A Stackpanel because it is faster than a RenderTransform.TranslateTransform when laying out objects to the visual.
Is this true?
Anyone have any data either way?
I don't have any data on this, but if we're just talking about stacking then you using a TranslateTransform to achieve the exact positioning of each item seems extremely fragile since the item could theoretically be of different heights/widths which could also theoretically change dynamically at runtime not to mention if the designer changes them by hand they have to redo the translate transform for N other UI elements. Using StackPanel means the Measure/Arrange phases will occur and no matter what size the items are they will be laid out precisely.