How can I add some extra space between the last item in a listview and the bottom of the control? I don't want to add an empty item to the bottom of the list.
You can't do this directly. Unfortunately the styling options of ListView are rather limited.
Unless you go for owner-drawing it.. Which is powerful and not very hard. But even there I doubt that the Items can have different Heights..
But there is a simple trick you can use:
Remove the LV's borders and place it inside a Panel with appropriate borders. Dock it there to Fill the Panel and give the Panel a Padding of maybe (0;0;0,10) and voila, the will always be a Padding of 10 pixels that looks as if it belongs to the ListView..
Instead of using the Designer, you could put these lines in the Form.Load to make it work on startup:
Panel P = new Panel();
P.BackColor = listView1.BackColor;
P.Location = listView1.Location;
P.Size = listView1.Size;
P.Padding = new System.Windows.Forms.Padding(0,0,0,10);
P.BorderStyle = listView1.BorderStyle;
listView1.BorderStyle = BorderStyle.None;
listView1.Parent = P;
listView1.Dock = DockStyle.Fill;
this.Controls.Add(P);
Related
Today I'm trying to use c# to fit a number of windows controls onto a panel sequentially.
I would like them to dock to the top so that I can then use BringToFront() to stack them up.
HOWEVER I would also like them to be centred. Currently, docking behaviour forces the controls to the left of the screen (however much I resize and change the location property)
I then tried to anchor my controls to the top of the panel instead. This enabled the controls to be centred and also let me resize them but anchoring has no stacking behaviour and each control overwrites the previous one.
I have researched this extensively for hours and have found no answers to this question. Is it possible to use either or both of these properties to stack my controls in the centre of the panel?
My code currently stands as so:
//Docking
userControl.Dock = DockStyle.Top;
userControl.Width = 633;
userControl.Left = (pnlRules.Width - userControl.Width) / 2; //doesn't work
Point location = new Point(((pnlRules.Width - userControl.Width) / 2), 0);
userControl.Location = location; //doesn't work
userControl.BringToFront();
OR
//Anchoring
userControl.Anchor = AnchorStyles.Top;
Point location = new Point(((pnlRules.Width - userControl.Width) / 2), 0);
userControl.Location = location;
userControl.BringToFront(); //doesn't work
My outputs are either stacked controls bound to the left panel edge (docking) or overlapping controls beautifully resized and centred (anchoring)
Thanks :)
Anya
Edit:
This captions my problem quite nicely:
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/manage-winform-controls-using-the-anchor-and-dock-properties/
This explains that using docking, the controls can be stacked next to each other. I would just like the docked, stacked controls to not be bound to the left edge of the panel.
There is no way to use a combination of docking and anchoring. A TableLayoutPanel may have worked here but I was tied to a simple Panel.
The fix was to use padding to force the control to centre:
userControl.Dock = DockStyle.Top;
pnlParent.Padding = new Padding((pnlParent.Width - userControl.Width) / 2, 0, 0, 0);
userControl.BringToFront();
Take a GroupBox, put let say Label inside and then set AutoSizeMode = GrowAndShrink and AutoSize = true.
Two problems will arise:
There is a huge gap between Label and bottom of GroupBox (almost enough to fit another Label lol);
AutoSize doesn't respect the GroupBox.Text property.
Question is how to make GroupBox.AutoSize working properly? Properly means: minimum Width should be enough to fit GroupBox.Text, there should be no gaps below for unknown reason (it's not Margin, nor Padding and it looks pretty ugly).
I've tried to measure string length in OnPaint and setting MinimumSize right there. It works, but I have doubts about this, as if I would want to actually set MinimumSize later - it will be lost after repaint.
Update, here is screenshot:
You can get rid of the unwanted yellow space at the bottom by deriving a new class from GroupBox that adjusts the bottom edge a bit. In VB something like ...
Public Class BetterGroupBox
Inherits GroupBox
Public Overrides Function GetPreferredSize(ByVal proposedSize As Size) As Size
Dim ns = MyBase.GetPreferredSize(proposedSize)
Return New Size(ns.Width, ns.Height - 15)
End Function
End Class
It's simple that the location of your Label is fixed at some point other than (0,0), try this:
label1.Location = Point.Empty;
You may also want to try setting the Padding of your GroupBox to 0 for all (default is 3):
groupBox1.Padding = new Padding(0);
It seems as though the GroupBox control has a predefined padding of sorts when growing the control if AutoSize = true. That is, once a control (inside the GroupBox) gets within 20 pixels or so of the bottom of the GroupBox, the GroupBox starts growing. This causes a 20 pixel or so padding from the bottom of the bottom-most control to the bottom of the GroupBox (as highlighted in yellow by #Sinatr's attached image).
Based on my observations, the padding seems to be less when growing the Width of the GroupBox.
At any rate, you can do something like the following "get around" the issue:
public void MyFunction()
{
groupBox1.AutoSize = true;
// Do stuff (e.g., add controls to GroupBox)...
// Once all controls have been added to the GroupBox...
groupBox1.AutoSize = false;
// Add optional padding here if desired.
groupBox1.Height = myBottomMostControl.Bottom;
}
I have a homework, where I need to create a winforms game using C#. I have the following components:
Panel subclass with custom paint event
Panel with default windows UI elements.
I want them to arrange like this:
Because I draw on the center panel manually, I want to set it's Width, and Height fixed, so the Form subclass, what will contain it, would show the whole panel.
I tried setting the size manually in the panel subclass:
Width = someFixedWidth;
Height = someFixedHeight;
Then adding it to the containing Form:
GamePanel panel = new GamePanel(...);
panel.Dock = DockStyle.Center;
this.AutoSize = true;
this.AutoSizeMode = AutoSizeMode.GrowAndShrink;
this.Controlls.Add(panel);
Using this, I thought, that the form will respect the size of the Panel, but it just shrinks the window to so small, that nothing is visible, only the title.
So my question is, how would I be able to set the size of the GamePanel manually, and then dock it in the center of the form, so that the Form will respect the size I set, and doesn't makes it smaller/bigger?
The Dock property is used to define the behavior of the component during resizing Container (Form) The way you did the screen is not centralized but is resized according to the screen changes, the ideal is to use a method to reposition the control and set its size. See this:
SuspendLayout();
Width = someFixedWidth;
Height = someFixedHeight;
panel.Size = new Size(panelWidth, panelHeight);
panel.Location = new Point( ClientSize.Width / 2 - panelWidth / 2, ClientSize.Height / 2 - panelHeight / 2);
panel.Anchor = AnchorStyles.None;
panel.Dock = DockStyle.None;
ResumeLayout();
In my case, I edited minimum height/width of the panel and it worked.
I tried to edit the code which related to design but it was not recommended to rewrite auto-generated code.
Thank you.
In the process of translating an application with C# + Winforms, I need to change a button's text depending on the language.
My problem is the following :
Let's say I want to translate a button from "Hi all!" to "Bonjour tout le monde" !
As you can guess, the button's size won't be the same if I enter english text or french one... My question is "simple", how can I manage to resize the button on the fly so the text fits its content in the button ?
So far I got something like that !
[Hi all!]
[Bonjour]
There's absolutely no need to use the underlying Graphics object as the other posters have said.
If you set the button's AutoSize property to true, the AutoSizeMode to GrowAndShrink, and the AutoEllipsis to false, it will resize automatically to fit the text.
That being said, you may need to make several layout adjustments to make this change fit into your UI. You can adjust the button's padding to add space around the text, and you may want to place your buttons in a TableLayoutPanel (or something) to stop them from overlapping when they resize.
Edit:
#mastro pointed out that: AutoEllipsis is only valid when AutoSize is false (As explained in the documentation), so it can be safely ignored as long as the other three properties are set correctly.
Your best bet is to set the AutoSize property as described ach's answer
However if AutoSize isn't working for you, resizing the button in code is easy enough. You can just need to set the button's width. The trick is making it big enough to fit your text.
using(Graphics cg = this.CreateGraphics())
{
SizeF size = cg.MeasureString("Please excuse my dear aunt sally",this.button1.Font);
// size.Width+= 3; //add some padding .net v1.1 and 1.0 only
this.button1.Padding = 3;
this.button1.Width = (int)size.Width;
this.button1.Text = "Please excuse my dear aunt sally";
}
Try this:
Button.AutoSize = true;
Button.AutoSizeMode = System.Windows.Forms.AutoSizeMode.GrowOnly;
Button.TextAlign = ContentAlignment.MiddleLeft;
Button.Padding = new Padding(0, 0, 0, 0);
To enable a Button in WinForms grow and/or shrink depending on the size of the Text, you need to set the button's AutoSize property to True and the AutoSizeMode property to GrowAndShrink.
// C#
btn.AutoSize = true;
btn.AutoSizeMode = AutoSizeMode.GrowAndShrink;
' VB.NET
btn.AutoSize = True
btn.AutoSizeMode = AutoSizeMode.GrowAndShrink
Please note that the AutoSize property will only allow the button's size to grow if the AutoSizeMode property is set to GrowOnly; by changing the AutoSizeMode property to GrowAndShrink, the button will now automatically extend or reduce in width and height based on its Text property.
Also note that in setting the two properties as shown above, you can make use of new lines (Environment.NewLine or vbCrLf) in the Text property and the button will scale down as needed.
As Andrew Hanlon explains, you can set AutoSize = true.
When doing so, you can also attain a perfect layout of the buttons automatically by placing them on a FlowLayoutPanel.
The horizontal distance between them will always stay the same when the FlowDirection of the FlowLayoutPanel is LeftToRight or RightToLeft. You can adjust this distance by setting the Margin property of the buttons appropriately. You can create groups of buttons by increasing the left margin of buttons beginning a new group.
If you set the Dock property of the buttons to DockStyle.Fill, they will even grow their width automatically in order to fit to the widest button if the FlowDirection of the FlowLayoutPanel is TopDown or BottomUp.
btn.AutoSizeMode = AutoSizeMode.GrowOnly;
btn.AutoSize = true;
btn.Dock = DockStyle.Fill;
In addition to setting the AutoSize to true and the AutoSizeModeto GrowAndShrink, as suggested in the other answers, you may also need to set the TextImageRelation property, if you have set the button image, so that the text doesn't overlap the image.
I assumed that the C# margin property had a meaning like in CSS - the spacing around the outside of the control. But Margin values seem to be ignored to matter what values I enter.
Then I read on the SDK:
Setting the Margin property on a
docked control has no effect on the
distance of the control from the the
edges of its container.
Given that I'm placing controls on forms, and perhaps docking them, what does the Margin property get me?
Like Philip Rieck said, the margin property is only respected by container controls that perform layout. Here's an example that makes it fairly clear how the TableLayoutPanel respects the Margin property:
using System.Drawing;
using System.Windows.Forms;
namespace WindowsFormsApplication1
{
public partial class Form1 : Form
{
public Form1()
{
InitializeComponent();
TableLayoutPanel pnl = new TableLayoutPanel();
pnl.ColumnStyles.Add(new ColumnStyle(SizeType.Percent, 50));
pnl.ColumnStyles.Add(new ColumnStyle(SizeType.Percent, 50));
pnl.Dock = DockStyle.Fill;
this.Controls.Add(pnl);
Button btn1 = new Button();
btn1.Text = "No margin";
btn1.Dock = DockStyle.Fill;
Button btn2 = new Button();
btn2.Margin = new Padding(25);
btn2.Text = "Margin";
btn2.Dock = DockStyle.Fill;
pnl.Controls.Add(btn1, 0, 0);
pnl.Controls.Add(btn2, 1, 0);
}
}
}
I believe the only .NET 2.0 built-in controls that respect this property are FlowLayoutPanel and TableLayoutPanel; hopefully third-party components respect it as well. It has basically no effect in other scenarios.
The margin property is used by whatever layout engine your control host (Panel, for example) is using, in whatever way that layout engine sees fit. However, it is best used for spacing just as you assume. Just read the documentation for that specific layout engine.
It can be very handy when using a FlowLayoutPanel or TableLayoutPanel, for example - to either reduce the default padding or space things out a bit. Obviously, if you write a custom layout provider, you can use Margin however you see fit.
Control.Margin property could be also useful at design time if you do not use layout container, but rather place controls manually.
It affects the distance between manually dragged controls at which snaplines appear.
E.g. for default margin value of 3 for text box you would have this snaplines:
And for margin of 10 - these (label has margin of 3 in both cases):
So if you have some strict guidelines for you UI then you just set the margins as you need and drag controls to the snaplines.