WPF Tab Margins

Question

I have a WPF TabControl, with some TabItems. I want margins on the left and right of the TabItems group, if that makes sense.

I'm going to draw some ASCII art below to make the point. I want a fixed margin to the left of tab one, but I also want a fixed margin to the right of tab three.

|--------------------------------------------------|
|            |-----||-----||-----|                 |
| <-Margin-> |  1  ||  2  ||  3  | <-Margin->      |
|------------|     ||-----||-----|-----------------|
|                                                  |
|  How do I get margin or padding on both          |
|    sides of my tabs?                             |
|                                                  |
|                                                  |
|--------------------------------------------------|

The number of tabs is unlimited, so they will stack as more are added. It needs to work correctly for that.

Also, note, that I don't want to make the whole tab control smaller. Just the tabitem tabs or headers or whatever they are.

I found that if I set the tabs to have a margin of something like "60,0,-60,0", I get the desired effect to the left of the tabs, but that seems like a hack, and won't work for the right hand side.

I am using WPF 4.0 in VS 2010.

Cheers!

Answer 1

Try using this style.

   <Style  TargetType="{x:Type TabControl}">
            <Setter Property="Template">
                <Setter.Value>
                    <ControlTemplate TargetType="{x:Type TabControl}">
                        <Grid>
                            <Grid.RowDefinitions>
                                <RowDefinition Height="Auto"/>
                                <RowDefinition Height="*"/>
                            </Grid.RowDefinitions>
                            <TabPanel
             Grid.Row="0"
             Panel.ZIndex="1"
             Margin="60,0,60,-1"
             IsItemsHost="True"
             Background="Transparent" />
                            <Border
             Grid.Row="1"
             BorderBrush="Black"
             BorderThickness="1"
             CornerRadius="0, 12, 12, 12" >
                                <Border.Background>
                                    <LinearGradientBrush>
                                        <GradientStop Color="LightBlue" Offset="0" />
                                        <GradientStop Color="White" Offset="1" />
                                    </LinearGradientBrush>
                                </Border.Background>
                                <ContentPresenter ContentSource="SelectedContent" />
                            </Border>
                        </Grid>
                    </ControlTemplate>
                </Setter.Value>
            </Setter>
        </Style>

EDIT

You can give the margin directly to the tabpanel inside the controltemplate of tabcontrol

Check the link for more

http://www.switchonthecode.com/tutorials/the-wpf-tab-control-inside-and-out