Centering Windows Forms Controls inside TableLayoutPanel with Visual Studio Designer - c#

I have control containers tightly bound to the edge of user controls, evenly spaced on both sides of said user control (child controls are always centered within the parent). Using the designer, I am attempting to add these user controls which that spans all columns within a TableLayoutPanel. I am clicking on the control container and clicking the "Center Horizontally" button on the "Layout" Toolbar. The control will not center.
Why? How do easily center the control?
What I am experiencing does not align with the documentation How to: Align and Stretch a Control in a TableLayoutPanel Control
Problem Control is the 5 Buttons which should be centered among the 2 spanned columns shown:
Buttons are tightly bound to edge of control:
New image showing anchors properly set to "Left, Right" on suspect control
New image showing anchors set to "None"

Try setting the Anchor property to None:
dataMasterControl1.Anchor = AnchorStyles.None;
It should center itself from within the TableLayoutPanel cells that contains the control. You may have to adjust the size of the UserControl itself.

I know this is not a full answer but have you tried to adjust the row, column and cell sizes at all? It would be helpful if you would post a screen shot maybe?
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.tablelayoutpanel(v=vs.80).aspx

Related

How to avoid Winform auto resize resulting in controls cropped?

I created a Form with fixed size, containing a fixed sized TableLayoutPanel. Controls are anchored to the TableLayoutPanel using the Anchor property. However controls are cropped after moving from Desktop to laptop.
I have tried setting MinimumSize, AutoSize and AutoSacling in Form and TableLayoutPanel, but controls are still cropped.
Suggestions?
You should try using Dock property of TableLayoutPanel.
Change its value to fill (Dock = Fill), this way your TableLayoutPanel will be drawn within the form border.
Another suggestion is, you should divide your main tablelayouttable like a grid and put one control inside its individual cell. Set their Dock property to Fill and you will see the result.
Hope it helps. Good Luck.

Can't get anchor to dynamically resize control

I have two controls in a groupbox ("Waveforms"). I would like them to dynamically resize also by height but can't get it to work. I've used left|top|right anchor for 1st control ("Left channel") and left|bottom|right anchor for 2nd ("Right channel").
Here is a short video of problem.
How can I acomplish this?
If you want your controls to share vertical space of the GroupBox, you can use a TableLayoutPanel or a SplitContainer.
By using a TableLayoutPanel you can easily specify how the vertical space should be shared by controls. For example you can add two rows to the TableLayoutPanel and give them each 50% of the whole height.
By using a SplitContainer, the user can change the occupied heights of the controls at runtime.

Center buttons in a container

How does one specify that a button centers itself in a container without having to specify a Location? Is it even possible?
The goal is to be able to center multiple buttons in a panel without having to perform calculations on their placement.
I know it is possible to center some controls on a form, not sure about a panel though. Anyway:
Disable the Left and Right anchors of your control if you want your controls to stay centered horizontally, and the Top and Bottom anchors if you want your controls to stay centered vertically,
In the designer window, select your control,
In the VS 'Format' menu, hit 'Center in form', then 'Horizontally' and/or 'Vertically'.
If you want to center several controls side to side, select them all and execute the above steps.
Controls will then stay centered in the form when the user resizes the window.
I'm not 100% sure of what you are asking, but try using a TableLayoutPanel, and drop one button in each cell of the table. If you anchor the TableLayoutPanel to the Top, Left, Bottom& Right, the Table will grow and shrink with the form, but each button will "float" relative to the top-left corner of it's containing cell.
Disabling all anchoring will keep the TableLayoutPanel at it's relative location within your form, but your buttons will remain spaced out evenly amongst one another.
Between standard control anchoring and/or the the TableLayoutPanel you should be able to find the correct type of anchoring that you desire.

How to resize the window without hiding controls

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........

Resizing a Single Control In WinForms

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.

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