Is there a way of automatically tells all children items (e.g. labels, textboxes etc) to have a margin of 5, within a panel (e.g. dockpanel)?
i.e. as opposed to having to set the margin for each element separately - also noting setting the margin on the panel itself is no good as then the panel has the margin not the elements.
by the way - I note there doesn't seem to be a PADDING element on the DockPanel (which would have helped)
I believe the answer is "no". Margin is not inheritable the way, say, font size is, so you would need to do one of the following:
Use a Grid
instead of a DockPanel
. This would allow you to use row and column definitions to maintain consistent spacing between items.
Use a style. You will still have to reference the style for each element (e.g., Style="{StaticResource MarginStyle}"
, which will require more typing than just Margin="10,5"
, but it would allow you to keep the margin values all in one place.
Bite the bullet and set the margin of each element individually.