How to create workspace like MS office applications?

Question

I'm wanting to create something similar to this picture from excel:

I did something similar in winforms with MDI child windows. I understand from other questions that MDI is not supported in WPF. However, isn't excel 2010 a WPF application ?

So I started with a canvas and a user control. I'm easily able to create user controls and place on the canvas but.. they don't look like a window and they don't have the support of a window for moving, resizing, closing etc and I'm realising that's a lot of code I need to find and get working.

I've read that MS has dropped MDI for a reason but on the otherhand, it looks like office is implementing it ?

Before I use a project like http://wpfmdi.codeplex.com/ I thought i'd ask and see if there is something "MS approved" I should be using.

Answer 1

AvalonDock from Extended Wpf Toolkit may be helpful. Use it with Caliburn.Micro to manage windows. Example solution: https://github.com/tgjones/gemini

Answer 2

MDI is supported by the framework, just like anything else (for example a docking layout, floating windows, ...), but as you figured out Microsoft itself doesn't supply a ready-to-use implementation. Just as it doesn't supply an implementation of docking layout/floating windows/.... So if you want to use it you either build it yourself or use something as in the link you posted.