title: Win8 Metro Constructing Columns for Tabular Data
body: <p>When creating an app for Windows 8, I understand the emphasis towards moving away from datagrid like design, as demonstrated in <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12228119/create-a-table-datagrid-in-windows-8-metro-apps-c-xaml">this stackoverflow question</a>. I still believe that showing data in a tabular format is still beneficial given certain situations.  Indeed, the default Window 8 apps have plenty of examples of tabular data, as is shown by the following screenshots.  They are exactly what I am looking for.</p>
  
  <p>The default Weather App
  <img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/lQeeH.png" alt="Weather app"></p>
  
  <p>The default Finance App
  <img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/ePT4F.png" alt="Finance app"></p>
  
  <p>However, my attempts have been not be fruitful (I can't even decide whether to use listbox, listview, or gridview). I seem to be unable to create columns in all my creations.  After a few minutes of searching on the internet I came across <a href="http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winappswithcsharp/thread/98dd45b0-0eba-431e-81de-5e12b4b5b2dd" rel="nofollow noreferrer">a MSDN answer</a>:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>You would need to create a very customized look by re-templating
    Listview/ListviewItem</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>Is this really the best/easiest way?  Is seems like my requirements are quite small.  The data is small (20 or so rows), read-only, and not-interactive (like the shown Window 8 apps).  I want columns, column headers, and alternating row styles.  Considering how common it is for there to be tabular data in the finance and weather app, someone has got to have cracked this problem!</p>