i'm currently modifying an existing C# WinForm project. I try to arrange some controls inside a GroupBox. However on runtime, they seem to be aligned differently and the Groupbox has a lot more space. Is there some option checked or is this the standard behavior? Any hints are highly appreciated! Thanks!
Here is what it looks like, as you can see there is no way except trial and error to arrange the checkboxes. On runtime there is easily enough space to have four colums in one row, in designer i can hardly fit three without having them overlap.
To prevent the groupbox to resize according to its content, you should make GroupBox.AutoSize to false.
GroupBox groupBox = new GroupBox();
groupBox.AutoSize= false;
check to Size property, and check if someone change it, for the checkbox Location to stay the same in different sizes of the form use anchor property and set it to left or left top.
it's basically must be the size, if the autoSize is off. check what's the starting size, and the size after the form is shown. it shouldn't be the same, but if it is, you can set it to smaller
Check the Anchor property on the checkboxes. Looks like some of them might be anchored to the right.
Not sure it applies to these checkboxes, but AutoScaleMode can impact the scaling of a form. Set to None to ensure it doens't get scaled.
Related
Fore note: I know you cannot use a margin with dock, but I am trying to figure a way around this.
I have two objects, a GroupBox (containing loads of buttons and stuff that will always be the same size no matter how big / small the form) and a WebBrowser. The former will take up roughly 100 pixels at the top, and the latter will take up the rest of the space. I have tried multiple ways to get around this, including Panels, GroupBoxs, changing Anchors and Docks, but nothing is working. I know there is a simple solution for this, but I cannot work it out. Could someone point me in the right direction for what I should be using?
P.S. New to WinForms so not very knowledgeable of things.
Start with a TableLayoutPanel control on your Form and set its Dock() property to Fill. Now change the ColumnCount() property to 1, and leave the RowCount() property at 2.
Add your GroupBox to the Top Row and adjust its size. Add your WebBrowser control to the Bottom Row and set its Dock() property to Fill.
Finally, select the TableLayoutPanel, find the Rows() property, and click on the "..." dots to the right. Select Row1 and change its Size Type to AutoSize.
Done!
Alternative Approach...
Add your GroupBox to the Form and set its Dock() property to Top. Add your WebBrowser control and set its Dock() property to Fill. Note with this approach, however, that the GroupBox will extend to fill the full width of the Form.
How to run or adjust Windows application efficiently in any screen resolution in C# 4.0?
I have done it in 1600 x 1200 resolution but if I try in lower resolutions only some part of the forms are visible.
How to solve this problem? I have searched a lot and got to know about Anchor & Dock will be useful but also to came to know that these should be used from the beginning of designing but I have completed my application while this resolution is now causing the problem when I install the application in any system
The quick and dirty method of making sure your controls remain visible would be to place a Panel on the form, set Dock = Fill and AutoScroll = True, then place every other control in your form inside it. Your controls won't get cut off, but your program won't win any awards for asthetics. If the program is brand new, that's really not the way you want to start things off.
You could redesign it to make use of Anchors and Docking, as you mentioned. You could also place items such as a row of Button controls or a series of TextBox controls in a FlowLayoutPanel, which will take care of repositioning them as you resize the form.
But if adjusting for screen resolutions is important to you, a better way would have been to use WPF from the start. Controls are automatically resized and repositioned as needed, based on their container control.
The real question should be:
How do I want the controls to resize themselves with their parent?
The answer is that you need to specify anchors. Anchors are used to tell your controls how they should react on resize, and what the concerns should be.
Lets say you have a form with two [Cancel] and [OK] buttons. They are usually seen fit at the bottom right of your window. But the default Anchor property is set to Top, Left, so on your form's resize, they stick to the Top, Left corner where they belong according to the default settings. This won't be any trouble if your maximize your form, thus you'll have your button probably in the middle of the screen. But at least, you will see every controls adequately.
But what if resize your form smaller and smaller? Do you still want them to stick at the Top, Left, or Bottom, Right would be more useful? My guess is that you should set the Anchor property to Bottom, Right, for those two.
This might come in handy to have different Anchor property settings depending on how you want your control to react to your form resize. Let's take three TextBox controls aligned horizontally with each other. Perhaps your longer field will be your object Description property located on horizontal-center of your form. Then, when you risize, you have to think what would make more sense on resize. If it is to make it longer on resize in order to fill your form width with all your control, then perhaps you want the DescriptionTextBox to get wider and wider, and the contraray should also be true, on form's resize, you probably want this field to be resized smaller too. Then, to make this happen, you have to set the Anchor property to Left, Right, so that the edge of your DescriptionTextBox control remains at the same very distance of your form's edge at any time.
Another thing is of concern in case of resizing to smaller window, is its MinimumSize property. One shall agree that there is use to have a form of size 34x34 pixels. So, setting your MinimumSize property to a certain size which makes sens for the form to exist, you will avoid display glitches of controls getting one over another.
For more details on the Anchor property: Control.Anchor Property
For more details on the MinimumSize property: Control.MinimumSize Property
I'm having the following code to set the width of the first panel to the width I need (for some reason I need to divide the expectedWith by two to get the actual width to be my expectedWith - don't know why).
splitContainer1.SplitterDistance = expectedWith / 2;
The next thing I need is that the first panel is fixed, means that if you resize the window, only the second panel gets larger and the first stays in size. To achieve this I use the following line:
splitContainer1.FixedPanel = FixedPanel.Panel1;
Problem now: it seems that the FixedPanel-property completly ignores the size of the first panel. It doesn't matter which value I set the SplitterDistance-property to if I used the FixedPanel-line. It is always the same. It doesn't even matter if I set SplitterDistance in the form designer.
Is there a solution to this?
I can answer my own question. This only happens if the content of the appropriate panel is using DockStyle.Fill in its Dock-property. The solution is to set the DockStyle.Fill value right after setting FixedPanel. This was also responsible for the "divide by two"-behaviour explained in the question.
Thanks to John Willemse.
I ran into this same problem, and was tempted to use the original poster's advice and just divide the desired SplitterDistance by two, as it always seemed to be (nearly but not exactly) twice the width that I asked for.
I tried changing the DockStyle of the children of the two panels to None before setting the SplitterDistance, but in my case it did not have any impact on the problem.
I solved the problem by changing when the SplitterDistance gets set. Originally I was setting the SplitterDistance on the panel before calling Form.Show(). Setting the SplitterDistance after the form is shown seemed to cure it.
Since you only want a fixed first panel and a dynamic second one, couldn't you use a TableLayoutPanel instead of a SplitContainer?
The DockStyle.None is a step in the right direction. But it needs 3-6 iterations (shaking the Splitter), until the Panel-Window has the expected dimensions. Strange!
I've figured this out. I needed to have a page open and load the splitter positions from the registry but was very frustrated with the way the watch I set up showed that it kept going back to the design time setting of the control.
To fix it all you do is change the property of "FixedPanel" from "None" to panel1 or panel2. Which is up to you. it only really comes into play when the minimum setting is not small enough and/ or when you have a splitcontainer within another sizable container. the fixed panel stays fixed then. Both panels can be resized as you choose using a mouse though so the word fixed is a little ambiguous in that regard.
so take the design time control. drop it on the form. resize it to fit your requirement and anchor it as necessary. nothing else except making one of the panels fixed. There is a property called "IsSplitterFixed" don't touch it, it's one of the reasons this control becomes unstable and must stay false, the panel.minsize properties should be set at design time based on requirements and you will always have to take cognisance of their values.
live happily ever after!
hii
I am a fresher in the c # so i want to know how to resize the datagrid(any other control)aith respect to the form size.
I just added one datagrid in the form then what i have to do?please help me...from the very basic please
For a dynamic layout that scales with your form size you have various options (depending on the complexity of your layout).
The first ones are
Anchoring
Docking.
But you can also work with advanced container controls like
TableLayoutPanel
FlowLayoutPanel
SplitContainer.
Some more informations i already post in an older question.
If you have more concrete problems about how to solve a specific layout problem you should post a new question with your exact problem.
But at a first tip i can say that it is never necessary to use the Resize event and do some size changes on yourself. There is always a solution that can be solved with the above elements.
You have to ways of dong it:
Using a Dock. It works fine and is very easy to use but its limit is that you can stick it to a one side of parent container. So if you want to streach control only in width you will fail.
Using Anchor. It require more configuration but you can specify all four(top, right, down, bottom option separably.
Regards
Szymon
Go to the properties window and scroll down to "Docking" and choose to dock the control in the parent container. This will give you various options about how you want the control to dock. You should put some containers in there of some sort, maybe, if you've got buttons or things you'd like to have show up above/below/next to the grid. Also, if your grid goes behind your other controls, select the control and bring it to the front.
edit:
You need some containers in which to put your buttons / drop-downs. You could use a flow-layout panel (which wouldn't resize its child controls), or you could use a plain panel or the table-layout panel. The table one will let you dock your child controls within each cell of the table, and you can set your columns & rows to auto-size to a percentage of the entire table width. That way everything will autosize accordingly.
I'm developing an app for Windows Mobile 5.0 and above, with C# and .NET Compact Framework 2.0 SP2.
I have a WinForm with two panels inside (upperPanel and bottomPanel). I want that upperPanel always fill 2/3 of form's height, and bottomPanel fills 1/3 of form's height. Both panels will fill completly form's width.
I've used this:
upperPanel.Dock = Fill;
bottomPanel.Dock = Bottom;
But upperPanel fills the form completly.
How can I do this? I want, more o less, the same gui on differents form factors and on landscape or protrait mode.
Thank you.
What you need to do is to put the bottom panel on first and set its Dock property to Bottom. Then set the panel's height to be 1/3 of the form's height. Finally, add a second panel and set its Dock property to Fill. The key here is that you want to add the control that will fill the remaining area to be added last. Alternatively, you can play around with the Bring to Front and Send to Back commands in Visual Studio to get the designer to cooperate.
You may also need to hook the OnSizeChanged event for the form and re-set the height of the bottom panel to account for layout changes. It's been a little while since I did compact framework programming, so I'm not sure.
Right click on the upperPanel and select Bring To Front. However, I don't think this will give you the result you want. When you resize, the bottom panel will remain the same height, while the upper panel will stretch to fill the form.
Using your docking settings, with this code might do the trick:
protected override void OnSizeChanged(EventArgs e)
{
base.OnSizeChanged(e);
this.bottomPanel.Height = Convert.ToInt32((double)this.Height / 3.0);
}
Set both panels to "not anchored". That is: Remove Dock-Value and clear the Anchor property. Then, move the controls so they are sized the way you'd like them to be sized.
After that, upon resizing the form, they should resize relatively.
EDIT
Oops, just tried it and sure it doesn't work. I mixed this up with a solution that automatically keeps controls centered within the window...
Well, I'd guess you then have to create a handler for the form's Resize event and manually align the controls after the form has been resized.
Go to Tools, Other Windows, Document Outline. Find the two panels, and swap the order of them. The control that has DockStyle.Fill has to come first for it to be docked correctly. (or last.. never sure which one it is, but it is one of them :p)
This won't solve the always 1/3 and 2/3 issue though... cause the bottom panel will have a fixed height (unless I am mistaken). I think maybe the TableLayoutPanel supports this though...
Update: As noted in the comments, that panel doesn't exist in the compact framework. So, I suppose the easiest solution to this problem would then try to use the docking, but update the height of the bottom panel whenever the size of the form changes.
If you want this to work perfectly you'll need to add some code to the Resize event of the Form which then specifically works out the relative sizes and places the controls in the correct place after a resize.
If you're not worried about losing precision and the forms aren't going to move much you can avoid this by using some relatively smart anchoring. Essentially you're going to have to select a "grower" (the part of the form that gets bigger, the bigger the form gets). In this scenario I would probably anchor the top part to Top | Left | Right and the bottom part to Top | Left | Right | Bottom. This would mean that the lower part of the form will get bigger if the form is expanded. In most cases this is acceptable. If it isn't use the Resize event and some code.
The easiest way to do this is to nest panels. Just set up panels for top bottom and fill. Then use panels within those panels to do the same. The only issues I've had therein are datagrid resizing, which is always a pain anyway. in that case, you have to use some code to resize the datagrid control on the form resize event.
I would like to add a point to #jasonh answer.
For the panel that occupies 2/3 of the form, you will have to set the AutoScroll property of the panel to true.
This will enable the panel to display scroll when the control size exceed the visibility to the user and also ensure the visibility of the smaller panel which is 1/3 of the forms height.
You can get the required design by using nested panels along with few setting with Anchoring and Docking Properties.Follow the following steps:
1) Add the Form and put a Panel1 on it. Set its Dock Property as 'Fill' and ResizeMode as 'Grow&Shrink'.
2) Add Second panel2 and set its Dock Property to 'Bottom', Set the Height and set the Anchor property to 'Top,Left'.
3)Add Third panel and set its Dock Property to 'None', Set the Height and set the Anchor property to 'Top,Bottom,Left,Right'.
Save and Compile. Now all the panels Would maintain their relative Positioning With resizing.