WPF DataGrid style-Silverlight DataGrid?

Question

That's not a secret: Silverlight's DataGrid default style is beautiful while WPF's is poor.

Instead of reinventing the wheel let me ask the community if anyone has copied the SL styles to use in WPF.

Please take a look at the screenshots and judge for yourself how the Silverlight and WPF teams invest in their products.

Silverlight default-style DataGrid:

WPF default-style DataGrid (updated after Saied K's answer):

Solution 1

I haven't found any projects with a working Silverlight-style DataGrid, so I created one on Codeplex:

http://datagridthemesfromsl.codeplex.com

Doesn't have all the themes, but there's at least a few there.

Solution 2

Buried deep within MSDN, I found this.

Toward the bottom of the article, you will see this phrase:

For example, take a look at the following illustration that shows part of the Styling with ControlTemplates Sample

If you click 'Styling with ControlTemplates Sample', it will take you to a download link. After download, you can compile the project and it includes all kinds of styles, including the elusive datagrid style! You can take MS's DataGrid.xaml file and modify it for your needs.

Solution 3

Seems there is not out-the-box style.
I posted a suggestion to Microsoft suggestions site, please vote here and here!!!

Anyone who has mimicked the Silverlight DataGrid default style to WPF should please post his answer and I will mark it as answer and give him a vote!

Thanks a lot!

Solution 4

WPF ships with a number of styles such as Luna, Aero, Classic, etc. These themes are applied based on your system settings. The screenshot from the previous post looks like the WPF Classic theme, but I'm guessing you're looking for a more appealing theme.

If you’re using a Classic system theme on your OS but would like your WPF application to use the Aero theme for example, you can add a merged dictionary to your app and force the Aero theme as shown below. Please note that you may need to change the binary version and public key accordingly.

<Application.Resources>
   <ResourceDictionary>
      <ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
         <ResourceDictionary
             Source="/PresentationFramework.Aero;V4.0.0.0;31bf3856ad364e35;component\themes/aero.normalcolor.xaml"/>
      </ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
   </ResourceDictionary>
</Application.Resources>

Hope that helps, Saied K.

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Comments

[Shimmy Weitzhandler]

I saw it, thanks, I hope someone of the lazy employees overthere is going to see it.

[Shimmy Weitzhandler]

I opened a new one, I think once they close a connection, no alerts are received for further comments, please look connect.microsoft.com/WPF/feedback/….

[devuxer]

+1 for that one too. BTW, one thing that does help a little bit for is to turn the grilines off using GridLinesVisibility="None". It still won't be as pretty as the Silverlight version, but those black gridlines are soooo ugly.

[Shimmy Weitzhandler]

I updated my photo, in the new photo you can see the wpf DataGrid's default style in a Windows 7 Aero theme environment, you can clearly see it on the window frame. With all due respect, you really didn't understood my question.

[Shimmy Weitzhandler]

Of course, we updated to 4.0 long ago, but .NET 4 didn't make any improvemnt in WPF style.

[gideon]

+1 thanks very much! Could you elaborate on your codeplex page how to use it with an existing data grid?

[SliverNinja - MSFT]

+1 Was looking for the WPF SimpleStyles project that contained all the basic control templates for WPF. Thanks for the help!

[SliverNinja - MSFT]

@gideon - the link is now available.

[Shimmy Weitzhandler]

@Matt, did you test this theme and it affects the DataGrid control as well?

[devuxer]

I gave it the only two votes I had left. (I hate that there are only 10 votes total...)

[Shimmy Weitzhandler]

Please vote here and here and leave rude comments!

[Rachel]

@Shimmy Are there different ResourceDictionaries with this sample app, please? I've only found Shared.xaml, and the skin is blue and really ugly when compared to the silver one shown on MSDN. Is this silver template also available for download?