Emulates Windows 8 Start Menu Tile Layout Engine

Question

So anyone out there knows of sample code or control that perfectly emulates the Windows 8 Start Menu Tile Layout Engine?

It should support mixed Square and Rectangle Tiles, and repacks the square tiles over or under rectangle tiles properly.

Note: WrapPanel works if ALL TILES are Square. But once you mix in tiles that span 2-Squares worth of space, the layout breaks, and is inconsistent with the Windows 8 Start Menu

I am expecting code that extends the WPF Panel.

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Disclaimer: Yes I have searched the Internet, the closest thing I've found is the CodeProject example, but that only works if all tiles are same-sized squares.

Answer 1

I've looked around myself and couldn't find anything to do what I/we want. I knew that to get this behavior we'd need some sort of custom panel object, so I set about creating one...

What it boils down to, is the tiles need to be arranged vertically, with double-width tiles taking up a whole row in that column, and normal width tiles to pair up. When it reaches the bottom of the container, it needs to create a new column and follow the same pattern.

Here's my implementation:

    public class MetroTilePanel : Panel
{
    protected override Size ArrangeOverride(System.Windows.Size finalSize)
    {
        double x = 0, y = 0, colWidth = 0, rowHeight = 0;
        int col = 0;
        colWidth = Children.Cast<UIElement>().Select(c => c.DesiredSize.Width).Max();

        foreach (UIElement child in Children)
        {
            rowHeight = Math.Max(rowHeight, child.DesiredSize.Height);

            if (x + child.DesiredSize.Width > (colWidth * (col + 1)))
            {
                // New row
                y += rowHeight;
                x = (colWidth * (col));
                rowHeight = child.DesiredSize.Height;
            }

            if (y + rowHeight > finalSize.Height)
            {
                // New column
                col++;
                x = (colWidth * (col));
                y = 0;
            }

            child.Arrange(new Rect(x, y, child.DesiredSize.Width, child.DesiredSize.Height));
            x += child.DesiredSize.Width;
        }
        return finalSize;
    }

    protected override Size MeasureOverride(Size availableSize)
    {
        double x = 0, y = 0, colWidth = 0;

        foreach (UIElement child in Children)
        {
            child.Measure(availableSize);

            if (x + child.DesiredSize.Height > availableSize.Height)
            {
                x += colWidth;
                y = 0;
                colWidth = 0;
            }

            y += child.DesiredSize.Height;
            if (child.DesiredSize.Width > colWidth)
            {
                colWidth = child.DesiredSize.Width;
            }
        }
        x += colWidth;

        var resultSize = new Size();

        resultSize.Width = double.IsPositiveInfinity(availableSize.Width) ? x : availableSize.Width;
        resultSize.Height = double.IsPositiveInfinity(availableSize.Height) ? y : availableSize.Height;

        return resultSize;
    }
}

Screenshot of the control in action:

Disclaimers:

• The MeasureOverride only works by chance, and isn't setup correctly.
• If you want the nice MetroTile layout, then stick to uniform sizes i.e 100x100 and 200x100
• I haven't fully tested it, but I will be implementing it into my fake-Metro app, so if you want to see any future changes, just holler.
• If you want the proper GridView tiling behavior, then we'd have to create a brand new control (to support dragging items around etc).

I hope this helps.

Answer 2

These are the two different libraries I evaluated for my project to create a Windows 8 like startpage in WPF:

1. Telerik RadTileList (paid)
2. mahapps.metro (open source)