Version

Views

Information can be expressed in a variety of forms, sometimes creating entirely different experiences for your users. At first glance, some Views may seem entirely unrelated to each other. Since Views can theoretically have any appearance or behavior imaginable in a user interface, their diversity can rival the Animal Kingdom. Dolphins and deer at first seem completely unrelated, but they share a common Mammalian ancestry. The differences between these two species, like the differences between any two Views, can be attributed to the environment in which they survive and thrive.

diagram showing the views available for xamdatapresenter

Think about which View best expresses to your end users the information that your data represents, and then choose the most appropriate View. This choice will determine your choice of a DataPresenterBase-derived control, as shown in the following table.

View Control(s)

Grid View — Presents regular arrangements of rows and columns in a grid-like structure.

xamDataGrid™ or xamDataPresenter™

Tree View — Presents regular arrangements of rows and columns in a grid-like structure, but in addition there is a special tree-field which is used to browse and navigate through hierarchical data.

xamTreeGrid™ or xamDataPresenter™

Carousel View — Presents objects moving along a prescribed path or circuit in a rotisserie manner.

xamDataCarousel™, xamCarouselPanel™, xamCarouselListbox™, or xamDataPresenter

Card View — Presents 'card' objects arranged in rectangular pattern.

xamDataCards™ or xamDataPresenter

(Any)

xamDataPresenter

Ultimate UI for WPF controls can be specialized to support one format. Both the xamDataCarousel and xamDataGrid controls fall into this specialized category. When you need greater flexibility to change your View in the future, the more general case for which the xamDataPresenter control was designed may be the better choice. Because of its highly extensible ViewBase class design, it can accommodate any View through its View property.