I'd like my textbox to have a width that will fit exactly the size of the text within it.
So if there's just one character within it it'll be a small width.
And if there's a long word within it it'll be a long width, etc.
Is this possible, and if so-- how can I go about this?
That is the default behavior of a TextBox, however the parent panel for the TextBox can affect a TextBox's size.
For example, a Grid will automatically stretch it's children to fill all available space. A DockPanel will do the same with the Last Child added to it, unless LastChildFill=False.
You can overwrite this behavior in the parent panel by setting the HorizontalAlignment of the TextBox. For example, setting HorizontalAlignment="Center" will center the TextBox inside a Grid rather than stretching it to fill all remaining space
It depends on the container the TextBox is in, but typically if you set HorizontalAlignment="Left" you will get this behavior.
However, if it's (for example) the last element in the DockPanel with the LastChildFill property set to true, then the DockPanel will stretch it out for you.
Related
Currently I am struggling to correctly size wpf controls. Therefore I'd like to know how dimensions like width are handed down the hierarchy in an xaml file. What happens for example if a width value is overwritten by a set MinWidth value? How and when are the other elements resized and what events are involved? Thanks for your support.
There is many topics in this question, it's looks like you're looking all information or manual about sizing controls.
For the first question basically a width property for a control is only for that control, not for the child controls. The layout (for example a Grid) of the controls plays an important role because sometimes they stretch, center or moves the controls, but a fixed number width works most of the time on the control you want to resize.
About MinWidth is not overwritten by Width property, yo can set less width of MinWidth, the value is stored but the control will be drawed with the MinWidth value because is higher in that case.
About Events, there is an Event called "SizeChanged" that triggers when the Height or Width is changed, but it's in execution time, there is no event that are triggering in design mode.
Try to practice with Grids, research about layouts like Grids, Canvas, StackPanels, etc. Maybe there is your answer. Canvas let you draw free, but I don't recomend get used to use canvas.
I want to make it so that my buttons change size based on the text inside them. Kind of like a Label with it's height and width set to "Auto", but I would like to start with a pre-determined dimension.
Is there a way to place a button, size it, and allow for re-sizing based on run-time text changes? If so, how do I do this?
I've looked at this example:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/188c196e-90d8-4584-bc62-38d7e008cf5c/how-do-i-resize-button-text-upon-button-resize
It has to do with inserting a textblock on top of the button, but when the text adjusts sometimes the new text becomes too small because the text does not wrap for some reason...
Thank you.
You can set the MinWidth and MinHeight properties so that you start with a predetermined size and the button will be able to grow with text.
Unfortunately this would not allow the button to get smaller.
You will need to size it based on its content, then. That is, have no XAML defined size.
Elements on the page normally size themselves to their children.
I have been struggling with a problem that at first glance might look easy for quite some time now. The problem in short is that I want to position an expander based on the height of the header in the expander.
The long story is that I have a grid with (currently, but that could be easily changed) two rows. At the bottom at the first row (kind of a header) I would like to put an Expander. However, I would like this expander to expand onto the second row. Simply putting the expander in the first row and setting vertical alignment to bottom positions my expander correctly but brakes the expansion (expands to same row only). Setting Grid.RowSpan="2" makes my expander expand correctly but that brakes my original vertical alignment to the bottom. I've tried putting the expander in the second row and then bind the margin of the expander to the ActualHeight of the expander (along with a converter which gave me a negative top margin equal to the height) which turned out great, until I clicked my expander :-). Setting the binding mode to "OneTime" gave me a zero margin for some reason.
Do anybody have an easy solution for this? Would it help to create a control template for my expander based on a canvas (my thinking is that canvas would be drawn on top of other controls)? I guess I could have done databinding to a descendant control if that was supported (which I don't think it is). Have I missed any obvious solutions?
I have the possibilty to change the control template for the expander and changing the grid layout of my window containing the control is not an issue if that could help me in anyway.
I am running Visual Studio 2008, .NET 3.5.
//daniel
There is a way to make it appear that a single expander has separate layout for its header and content, so they can be in separate grid cells or even totally separate parts of the window. This may be overkill for what you really want to accomplish, but here it is:
Create an expander with your header but an empty body. Place it in the upper cell.
Create another expander with the body you want but set its Template property to a template containing just a ContentPresenter so no header will be visible. Place it in the lower cell.
Bind the second expander's IsExpanded property to the first expander's IsExpanded property
Optionally adjust tab order so the two Expanders are together
Now when you expand the upper expander the lower expander will expand as well. If there is no gap between them, they will appear as if they were a single expander.
Another option which may be effective is to use a single Expander and modify its template so its entire header (including the button) has VerticalAlignment="Bottom" and is inside a zero-size Canvas. In that case the entire Expander would go in your lower cell. This has the disadvantage that layout of the upper cell would be unaware of the space used by the Expander so it would likely place other controls over or under it depending on the z-order.
I have this:
Each list is its own WrapPanel and they are all on another WrapPanel which is in a ScrollViewer. If I don't set the height myself for the main WrapPanel it assumes I want the WrapPanel as high as it can go giving me only one column whereas I want as many columns as needed to fill the window.
If I set the Width and Height of the WrapPanel that holds everything to fixed numbers, but I want it to change when the user resizes the window.
In your example screen shot and description I see a tab control whose anchor is set to Top, Left, Bottom, and Right. The tab page with AutoScroll set to true. Within the tab page I see a FlowLayoutPanel. The FlowLayoutPanel has its AutoSize property set to true. I also see a set of other panels/user controls each of which contains a title and a series of check boxes.
You can`t achieve this with standard controls. You can try to create your own custom WrapPanel implementation. But, actually, looking at original WrapPanel sources I think this will be quite tricky. You see, what you want, is basically to measure how many columns can fit in the current window, while every element in column can be of any size. The way I see that algorithm, it will require N*N iterations to get the final result. So you may have problems with performance.
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.