What is difference between “ * ” and “Auto” in Silverlight Grid Layout Definitions

Question

trying to understand the following:

Answer 1

Auto means give this column/row the size of the contained items.

* means share the rest of the available space with other columns/rows that also specify *.

In fact * is equivalent to 1*. It is possible to specify 2*, 3* ... N* for a width or height. The algorithm Silverlight uses is to total all values of N for all the rows using * then give each row its appropriate share of the available space. For example:-

This would first determine how high the forth row needs to be from its content and substract that from the full availabe height. The remainder of height will be divided amoungst the * rows. The first getting 1/6, the second getting a 1/3 and the third getting 1/2 of the available height.