I have a windows form which have a lot of controls in
that(Listbox,Groupbox,Combobox,TextBox,ListBox etc). I need to resize
and arrange the controls automatically whenever the form's size gets
changed. I need to know the difference between Dock and Anchor to
implement this. What is the actual difference between Docking and
Anchoring?
The Anchor and Dock properties of a form are two separate properties.
Anchor refers to the position a control has relative to the edges of the form. A textbox, for example, that is anchored to the left edge of a form will stay in the same position as the form is resized.
Docking refers to how much space you want the control to take up on the form. If you dock a control to the left of the form, it will stretch itself to the height of the form, but its width will stay the same.
This EXAMPLE can help you understand a bit more.
Related
On my form I have a Panel control that contains a PictureBox control and a Label control.
The panel is not visible in the image above but it's basically the area around these two controls.
I have set the Anchor property of all these three controls to Top, Bottom, Left, Right so that they follow their parent container's re-sizing behavior.
The L abel control (postbagfolderempty) works properly but the PictureBox (EMPTY!) does not seem to be moving from its original position.
Is there an additional property I need to set?
Update: I changed my PictureBox's AutoSize property to None. It has started to move, but as I try to enlarge my form, it starts sinking into a white area (image below).
Make sure your PictureBox doesn't have SizeMode set to AutoSize.
Anchoring changes the size, if it's autosized it won't change anything
Also, make 100% sure your PictureBox is actually a child of the panel. It's easy to check: select it on the designer and press Esc, it should select the panel.
Update
As per the comments, seems the problem is that you are anchoring to all the sides (thus producing the scaling of the control).
If you want a panel that scales with the form, and controls within the panel that are centered but not scaled along, then anchor that panel to all sides, place the controls inside the panel centered in the designer, and set their anchors to None, that way they won't scale, and since they are not anchored, they will move along when the panel scales (but they won't scale with it, which -seems- it's what you are aiming at)
When I expand the window, the textbox contained in it is not expanded. Can I expand it automatically when I expand whole app?
I can not find property for this
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.textbox%28v=vs.71%29.aspx
The Anchor property in the designer. Set it to Left,Right,Top,Bottom. This will cause the size of the text box to be linked to the size of its parent control.
Anchor and Dock Properties
These two properties are especially useful when you are designing your form. Ensuring that a window doesn't become a mess to look at if the user decides to resize the window is far from trivial, and numerous lines of code have been written to achieve this. Many programs solve the problem by simply disallowing the window from being resized, which is clearly the easiest way around the problem, but not the best. The Anchor and Dock properties that have been introduced with .NET lets you solve this problem without writing a single line of code.
The Anchor property is used to to specify how the control behaves when a user resizes the window. You can specify if the control should resize itself, anchoring itself in proportion to its own edges, or stay the same size, anchoring its position relative to the window's edges.
The Dock property is related to the Anchor property. You can use it to specify that a control should dock to an edge of its container. If a user resizes the window, the control will continue to be docked to the edge of the window. If, for instance, you specify that a control should dock with the bottom of its container, the control will resize itself to always occupy the bottom part of the screen, no matter how the window is resized. The control will not be resized in the process; it simply stays docked to the edge of the window.
try using the property "Dock", if you are working with winforms
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........
how to resize a tab control in a winform (C# .Net), controls(inside tabpage) must move while resizing the form
maybe the Dock property is what you're looking for.
If you put a panel.Dock=Dock.Fill then it will take all the space available.
so when the controls is resized, the panel is too.
Going off of your comment to Andrzej's answer:
the control's size must be unchanged and move one below the other while resizing the form
It sounds like what you need is a FlowLayoutPanel. Drop one onto your TabPage, set its FlowDirection property to the value of your choice, and place your controls into it. Now, whenever the TabControl is resized, the controls it contains will automatically shift positions to fill the space.
Set Anchor property of that control. Alternatively you may use Dock
Anchor - defines a constant space between one or more edges of it's container.
Dock - control borders are docked to its parent control.
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.