Develop Reference

Windows Form Awkwardly "Resizes" when Started

I'm using Windows 10, Visual Studio 2017 and writing a C# Windows Form Application.
I have a windows form application that I am writing (partly in an attempt to get better at writing such things). I have designed my form nicely, with everything spaced and sized properly, but when I press F5 to start the form to debug it, I find that it loads at about 75% the size of the one I see in the designer.
This resizing seems a bit hit and miss, with buttons that were previously aligned no longer being so, and text no longer fitting in its spaces (see pic - the top part shows the designer and the bottom shows the actual form being run).
I would like to have the designer accurately reflect the final look of the form - does anyone know what is going on or how to avoid the problem? Everything I have looked at on the web talks about choosing to resize the form, not this enforced resize!

Have you changed the whole form font size? By default WinForms designer set
this.AutoScaleMode = System.Windows.Forms.AutoScaleMode.Font;
try changing the AutoScaleMode and see what happens.
I've experienced similar WinForms designer issues when the default Font (in the form property) size is not 8,25pt. I dont't know why but seems related to desktop and/or screen configuration. Not sure but some weird behaviours could be bugs (WinForms is now quite old...).
AutoScaleMode.Font means that form scaling is based on font size. So trying changing different font settings can solve the problem.
hope this help

When designing the form, the form automatically sets the anchor points to Top Left. You will have to set the anchor points to your form.
The anchor style works like this. On a control if you set anchor points to:
Top/Right then the control stays in the Top Right.
Top/Left then the control stays in the Top Left. Bottom/Right then the control stays in bottom right. Bottom/Left then the control stays in bottom left.
Top then it stays at the top.
Bottom then it stays in the bottom.
Left then it stays in the Left.
Right then it stays in the right.
Top/bottom stretches top to bottom.
Left/Right stretches left to right.
Now when you anchor a control to any of those combinations they will stay in that location when form is maximized. Controls can anchor to each other as well.
I hope this helps.
Also here is a tutorial I did on this.:
https://youtu.be/wlZ6pt79v1E

accurately reflect the final look of the form
Your form's appearance is mostly decided by the end user. Font, size, colour, scale, contrast... all these things are under the users control, not yours.
Consider using split panels, and maybe some flow panels. Get used to 'randomly sizing' the form when you think you've finished designing, to see how it reacts to being the 'wrong size'. Someone will find a way to shrink or grow your form, and handling that gracefully is easier than enforcing a view.

How to run or adjust Windows application efficiently in any screen resolution in C# 4.0?

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

Changing textbox text causes parent windows to resize incorrecly

I've tried looking many places for an answer to an issue I'm having and so far I've found nothing.
What I currently have is a c# windows form with user controls inside it. Some user controls have other controls inside them. What happens when I change the text in a textbox, is its parent windows will no longer resize like they should when changing the window size. i.e. A horizontal scrollbar will appear even though horizontal scrollbars are disabled in that specific window. Its almost as if changing the text changes the parent window's styling.
In case this is too vague, I have a textbox inside a panel with a docking property set to fill. The panel has a padding of 10 in order to allow the textbox to have some white space for aesthetic purposes. This control resides within a parent control (we'll call it parent 1), which in turn resides within another control as well (we'll call it parent 2). So when I change the textbox's text (at all, even adding a space), will then make parent 2 have a horizontal scrollbar flicker and sometimes even remain when resizing the form window manually.

You should make sure that not only the TextBox in the UserControl is docked to fill but also that the user control itself and its parent (and its parent) are Docked correctly or have anchor set so that they resize with the Form.
Do you execute any special code when the user enters a character? (KeyPressed event etc.). If yes you should try disabling the events temporarily to see if they cause the problem.
If you post a sample of your code it would be easier to help. Without this we can only guess, like I tried...

I found out my issue! When using autoScrollBars and double buffering, it caused the horizontal scrollbar to show when it shouldn't have (at least in my case) when resizing the window. The answer was simple, forget the autoScrollBars, and implement my own vertical scroll bar!
I was actually getting some code to post up on here for you guys to look at, but when looking at it, I decided to forget the autoscroll, and lo and behold it worked!
I'm actually curious as to why that is though. My friend heard that .net has some issues with autoScroll but I didn't think it would be to this degree.

Docking and Anchoring on a Windows Form application

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.

UserControl inflates when placed on a form?

EDIT > SOLVED: It turns out that I had set all of the UI elements' font properties to be 14pt Arial, but not the usercontrol itself, so when it was drawing it on the form, it was resizing it all. Changing the usercontrol's font size to 14pt Arial, and then repositioning/resizing everything fixed it.
I started working on the UI for an app I'm making. The app has a devexpress tab control, and initially I was just placing all of my controls in there to see what it'd look like and to work out any layout issues. Well, I decide to pull out all of the ui elements for each tabpage and toss them into a UserControl and to have that UserControl fill the tab page.
The problem is that it looks perfectly normal (ie. the same as before) when in the usercontrol but when I bring that over to the tab page, all of the ui elements are HUGE (about double in size, but not exactly double).
Here's some images to show you what I mean.
Edit> Note: This is a winforms app.
UserControl:
edit > images removed
Form:
edit > images removed
It turns out that the objects are being resized. I checked the .Size property of the ui elements after the usercontrol.load event and they are much larger than they are supposed to be. This happens if there is the anchoring as I'd like it, all top-left anchored and no anchoring at all.

The AutoScaleMode of the UserControl should be at "None"...

Hard to say without seeing code...
[edit]
Well if you have no code then I only have one idea. The controls inside your user control have anchors that are being adjusted to the size of the parent control. The parent control could be larger than expected making all the anchors adjust with the parent. This would then make them all appear too big. This is my only idea...
[/edit]