WPF windows organization techniques

Question

Hello, Im developing some wpf app. Basically i have two types of windows: search windows and insert/edit windows. When i developed win forms apps, i used a trick, called MdiParent. In that way i had ability to put my caled search type windows in a "stack". In orher words if i called 5 different search windows from meniu, they apeared in a component like tab control, one after other.By clicking on that tabs, i could see search results of clicked tab window. The trick as i said was MdiParent technique, like:

    private ProductDiscount frmProductDiscount = null;

private void ProductDiscountToolStripMenuItem_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{

         if ((frmProductDiscount == null) || (!frmProductDiscount.Visible))
        {
            frmProductDiscount = new ProductDiscount();
            frmProductDiscount.MdiParent = this;
            frmProductDiscount.Show();
        }
        else
        {
            frmProductDiscount.Activate();
        }
    }

So does anyone can me suggest a good way to implement such a window organization technique in WPF and put some links or examples..?That would be a big help for me.

Answer 1

There is no equivalent of Form.MDIParent in WPF and MDI does not support the idea of an MDI layout. You can set a Windows Owner to another window. This will minimise the child when the parent is minimised.

For an example of MDI style functionality have a look at this thread link text where Marlon Grech has written something similar to what I believe you are trying to do.

Answer 2

We developped similar application, as WPF doesnt have any default MDI framework but since its completely customizable, what you can do is, you can create User Controls of your "Window" instead of Window type and you can use inside a TabControl and you can customize TabControl to have close buttons etc. Windows in Tabs as they appear in Visual Studio, IE etc, they work good for this type of scenario when you dont want to block user input on modal dialog.