How to move a tab control dynamically on a wpf form

Question

Hi

I am trying to move a tab control on a wpf around dynamically. The tab control is hooked to a timer and basically if you press a button the size is shrunk so it looks and behaves like an expandable panel. However, when I 'shrink' the tab control the width is adjusted centrally, whereas I want the control to stay where it was positioned in the X axis, how do I do that (why they couldn't do control.location(x,y) I don't know!)?

GeneralTransform myTrans = this.tabcontrol1.TransformToAncestor(this);
Point p1 = myTrans.Transform(new Point(0, 0));

I am using the two lines above to get the position, this can be done either via GeneralTransform or visualTreeHelper (which returns a vector) and how do I apply this to the tabcontrol to get it to move?

Thanks, R.

Answer 1

Have you tried using a Canvas as a container to hold the TabControl? Canvas only supports absolute positioning, so you can position it using Canvas.Top and Canvas.Left. If you need to stretch the control to fill the area, you can bind to the ActualWidth/ActualHeight of the Canvas container.

Here's an example of what the XAML might look like.

        <Canvas x:Name="tabCanvas" Grid.Row="1">
        <TabControl x:Name="tabControl" Canvas.Left="0" Canvas.Top="0"
                    Width="{Binding ElementName=tabCanvas, Path=ActualWidth}"
                    Height="{Binding ElementName=tabCanvas, Path=ActualHeight}">
            <TabItem Header="Item 1" />
            <TabItem Header="Item 2" />
        </TabControl>
    </Canvas>