Context:
I'm trying to build a form using Microsoft Prism guidelines.
I have two user controls that get injected into a form.
The form contains two panels that represent the containers which will hold the user controls.
The user controls get inject at run time via DI (I'm using the MVP pattern which is similar to MVVM but tweaked for Winforms).
The form has a default minimum size but the maximum size was not specified. The only way to resize the form is to make it fullscreen. It has the AutoSize property set to TRUE and the AutoSizeMode set to GrowAndShrink
Both user controls have the AutoSize set to TRUE.
All the containers inside the user controls have the AutoSize property set to TRUE, DOCK set to FILL and AutoSizeMode=GrowAndShrink. The maximum size for a control is not set.
The panels inside the the form are stacked one under another and have the Anchor property set to: TOP, LEFT,RIGHT, respectively: BOTTOM, LEFT, RIGHT.
Problem:
When resizing the form to fullscreen, I would expect that the user control to expand to fill the entire screen.
That is not happening.
The user controls do not change in size and I can't figure out a reason for it.
Thanks.
UPDATE
If I change the DOCK property of the panels inside the form to TOP, respectively
FILL, the panel will get resized, but the user controls inside the panels remain unchanged.
Forget about setting Dock and AutoSizeMode on your controls—just use Anchor and you will find it works just fine.
I never use AutoSize = true. I always have it at false (as a matter of fact I had to check some of my forms to verify that the AutoSize and AutoSizeMode properties even existed on controls on my forms).
In the scenario you describe, I would have the Anchor set to Top, Left, Bottom, Right, both for the panels and the controls contained within.
Set the Dock of the control in the panel also to Fill.
Related
Well, I have a panel that contain some forms. I set panel Dock to Fill because it will be good when window maximized. I set the minimum size of panel too because the contents/forms quite be long to bottom.
Sadly, the scroll bar not shown even I set AutoScroll to True and set AutoScrollMinSize. How to configure this properly?
Let's say I have window height size only 300px but the panel (in window) that contain my forms have height about 600px. I need to always show the scroll bar.
Thanks in advance
Thanks all, I finally figured out what's wrong. I don't need set the MinimumSize of panel
Properties of Panel
Dock: Fill
AutoScroll: true
AutoScrollMinSize: 600px (Height)
It will be automatically force the panel to follow AutoScrollMinSize instead MinimumSize or default Size.
Make sure you don't have any child anchord to the right of the panel, as showed in MSDN documantation:
"There is currently a limitation in Windows Forms that prevents all
classes derived from ScrollableControl from acting properly when both
RightToLeft is enabled and AutoScroll is set to Yes. For example,
let's say that you place a control such as Panel—or a container class
derived from Panel (such as FlowLayoutPanel or TableLayoutPanel)—on
your form. If you set AutoScroll on the container to Yes and then set
the Anchor property on one or more of the controls inside of the
container to Right, then no scrollbar ever appears. The class derived
from ScrollableControl acts as if AutoScroll were set to No.
Currently, the only workaround is to nest the ScrollableControl inside
another ScrollableControl. For instance, if you need TableLayoutPanel
to work in this situation, you can place it inside of a Panel control
and set AutoScroll on the Panel to Yes."
What are the rules which I have to respect to make the Form scrollable...
I simple set the Property AutoScroll to true.
I also tried while Auto Scroll is true, to set AutoSize to true/false, but none of these worked... also tried to put Panel and added all components in there... still nothing...
Maybe using V or HScrollBar can help, but i really don't know how to link it with the Form...
form.AutoScroll = true;
formMainLayout.AutoScroll = true;
rootPanel.AutoScroll = true;
The content controls the scrolling. The scrollbars do not appear unless they are needed. Usually, there is a property available that you can set to force them to be visible always, and simply disabled until needed.
The AutoScroll property must be true, as you have already found. But then the content of the scrollable control must force the parent control to display the scrollbars. This part is up to how the controls are embedded within the parent.
Try these two experiments:
Place a Panel on your form and dock it to Fill. Set the AutoScroll property of the Panel to true. Into that panel, place a TextBox and set it to dock as Fill as well. Also set MultiLine to true. Run the application, and you will notice that the size of both is simply using the available space...no scrolling can occur because neither the Panel, nor its TextBox become larger than the space they occupy.
Perform the same steps as in #1, but this time, do not dock the TextBox. Instead, set it to a large size, something that you know will be larger than the amount of Panel that is visible. Running the application should now produce a scrolling Panel.
Hopefully this little test helps to demonstrate what is controlling the scroll on a form.
I was also having the same problem, I managed to fix it...
All the child controls inside the panel had a Left & Right anchor, and when I only set the anchor to Top, the scrollbars where working fine.
I am not sure as to why the Left and Right anchor (of the child controls) forces the panel not to show scrollbars.
But anyways... hope this will help anyone as of this date.
The AutoScroll property should work fine, but most likely you are not using it right: the bar appears only when required. Example: minimum Y of the Form is 0 and minimum Y of one of the controls in it (a TextBox) is -20.
If you want to include a scroll bar no matter what (controls inside the boundaries of the form or not), you can also do it. Sample code (from MSDN) for a vertical scroll bar:
// Create and initialize a VScrollBar.
VScrollBar vScrollBar1 = new VScrollBar();
// Dock the scroll bar to the right side of the form.
vScrollBar1.Dock = DockStyle.Right;
// Add the scroll bar to the form.
Controls.Add(vScrollBar1);
You need to set the properties for the parent panel.
Dock = Fill
Anchor = Top, Left
AutoScroll = true
That's it. Good luck! ^^
note its for vertical scroll
Turn On auto scroll property of your Form. insert one panel and
set panel width to the form width and panel height
equal to length of your total content or may be 1300 or 1500 as
required.
Place panel location as you want set panel anchor
property to top. place your all
content inside panel.
hope it will solve your problem
I had the same problem.
You have to add only this:
this.AdjustFormScrollbars(true);
How can I resize a windows form without hiding controls that are positioned outside the form's new size?
Check out the .Anchor property of the buttons you want to avoid hiding. The anchor property can be set such that the placment of the buttons is alwas relative to one or more edges of the form. This way, when the form is resized, the buttons location is "anchored" to (for example) the Bottom and right edges of the form.
This will not prevent the user from making the form smaller than the minimum space required by the buttons, but I believe you can also set a minimum size property for the form.
set the anchor property of your buttons or items in form.
If still you have issues, put the buttons or controls to pannel or groupbox and dock the buttons to parent container. Then apply anchor property for controller.
I Have found the similar issue and what i tried is to put all the buttons in a TableLayoutPanel and set the Anchor property of the buttons that way i am able to resize the button corresponding to the size of the form.
If any body has a better idea kindly suggest........
I'm not sure what it's called in the land of WinForms, but in web development terms, I'm looking for a frame type element that can be added to a winform.
I want a panel that is anchored top,bottom,left,right but if the form the panel is resized to a smaller size than the elements in the panel, scroll bars will appear around the panel allowing the user to see the contents of the panel without expanding the form.
I hope that makes sense, and that such a thing exists.
Thanks!
Yes, a Panel control. Set AutoScrollMinSize to the minimum size you want before scrollbars appear. Set AutoScroll to True. Set MinimumSize if necessary, it shouldn't be.
The controls inside the panel need to auto layout by themselves so they'll move as necessary when the panel gets smaller. Use their Dock or Anchor properties. If the layout gets complicated then switch to a TableLayoutPanel or FlowLayoutPanel control.
What about a panel? System.Windows.Forms.Panel
You are looking for a "Panel" control. Just set the "Dock" property to get docking going..
You add a Panel to your form and set Panel.Dock = Fill. Your Panel will auto-resize when you resize the form.
Set Panel.AutoScroll = True
Then, you add controls to your Panel. Set the controls' Dock property accordingly. Now, when you resize the form, scrollbars will appear if controls are covered up.
There are a couple of different panels in the standard windows controls that do what you want... just look in the toolbox when editing a windows form, under 'container'
What do you want it to contain? A web page, or just windows form controls?
How might I design a UI in C#/WinForms which happens to contain several different control types such that only the ListView control gets resized if the user resizes the window?
There are two primary ways to make a control automatically resize based on size changes of the parent container (a Form in your case):
Set the Dock property of the control to DockStyle.Fill.
Set the Anchor property to "Top, Bottom, Left, Right"
Use the Dock property with Dock.Fill
The advantage of this method is that it takes the entire control and tells it to always fill the entire client area of the parent container (in your case, the Form client area). That's useful if you want to do something like fill a Form with a ListControl or TreeView or something like that. But it's not as useful if you want to scale a single control while using other controls (as you indicate is your need). In that case, you would need to set the Dock property on those other controls to DockStyle.Top or DockStyle.Bottom to have them float above or below your main resizing control.
That's a hassle and it also limits the layout options of the other controls. You can mitigate that problem by docking two Panel controls, one at the top and another at the bottom of the Form. Those panels will remain in fixed positions while the middle area (with your DockStyle.Fill control) scales with the parent Form. You can then put any controls in any layout configuration in those "header" and "footer" panels.
This kind of composite form-building using docked panels is incredibly powerful. Quite frankly, it was game changing in .NET when they introduced this with .NET 1.0 WinForms.
Use the Anchor property with "Top, Bottom, Left, Right"
If all you want to do is have a single control on a form scale, while others stay "stuck" to the edges, use the Anchor property. For the controls that you want to stay at the top, set the Anchor property to "Top, Left" (the default). For controls that you want to stay at the bottom, set the Anchor property to "Bottom, Left". For controls that you want to grow in width with the form/dialog (such as a single-line textbox control), set the Anchor property to "Left, Right" (and set Top or Bottom depending whether you want it move as the top or the bottom of the dialog changes.
And if you want a control to resize in all directions with a Form, set the Anchor property to "Top, Left, Bottom, Right". Very useful for "main control" type of things, such as a dominant listbox, tree control, or multi-line textbox.
For what you need, don't mess with the AutoSize or AutoSizeMode... those properties control how a control changes size based on its own contents, not how it resizes based on its container's behavior. Think of AutoSize/AutoSize mode as inward looking, while Anchor/Dock are outward looking. You get some very bizarre behavior if you use both sizing methods at the same time. Generally not useful.
Dock the ListView to all four sides of the form, and the other controls to 2 or less.
There is a property on controls called "Anchor" (in "Layout" category) if you set this to "Top, Bottom, Left, Right" it will maintain margins between control and its parent container causing it to resize as container changes size.
But if only one of anchors along one axis is enabled (e.g. "left", but not "right") it will move the control instead, again, preserving locked margins between the control and its container.
In short : exactly what James said, except it is "Anchor" not "Dock" property. Dock is similar but not exactly the same.
IF you put the ListView in one panel of a SplitContainer and put the remaining controls in the other panel you can restrict the growth of the second panel by setting the min and maxsize.
If your ListView is docked Full then it'll take all the increase when the form is resized.
What if we have multiple controls in the form?
For example: If a form is used to generate some result in a grid with respect to the data entered in couple of text-boxes or combo-boxes, etc.;
And we want them to resize/realign accordingly and not overlap each other (as it happens when using the dock-fill), especially with the grid-view or similar control in context.