My application has several controls. Like in one screen has TreeView on left side, GridView with paging in the middle and 4 buttons at right side. The controls properly appear when the form is in a maximized state, but if I minimize it the controls do not properly fit on the screen.
I tried with different different tricks like table layout.. in dat I added a panel, etc...
But I could not solve the problem.
How can I create such type of screens which fits independently of size of my window?
Thanks
I had the same problem a while ago. In my case i had a Button and a ListView within a GroupBox that was inside a SplitContainer, which was within a UserControl on a TabControl. I wanted the button on the top right located and anchored and the ListView took the space leftover, so i couldn't dock it. Instead it was anchored in all four places.
In my case my button and the listview are worked and behaved correctly in the designer, but in my running app the button was positioned to far on the right and the ListView size had also a too much width.
For a first bugfix i did some iterations about positioning the button in the designer a little more to the left, check it running mode, re-align the button in designer from the impression i had in the last run.
So i got it to work and started over with some other thing i had to do in my app. After a while i got a new feature request and needed another button within this messy thing. This time i did a complete rebuild of the gui elements on a new usercontrol, just to see if the problem reappears. To my amazement this gui mock just behaved as expected.
Within my code i didn't anything about changing the location, size, anchors, docks, etc. So the problem had to be within the InitializeComponents() code created by the designer.
I started with a diff of both versions and couldn't see any big differences (there were a lot of them, but only minors like size, location or name). So i started to put code from my crazy usercontrol into the mock and running the mock in my app. After several copies the problem also appears in my mock, so i got the root cause of the problem.
What do you think, which property leaded to the crazy behaviour?
It was the MinimumSize of my SplitContainer!
So to get really the root cause of your problem you should start over with an empty UserControl (or Form) and just place all the elements on it with the desired behaviour (size, location, anchor, dock).
Nothing more!
Then test if this mock behaves the way you want and if not, post this code here and tell us what you expected to see.
Related
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.
I have a problem with screen flickering. I read some other topics on this case, but there are solutions that didn't work for me, I think that's because I don't know what exactly causes the problem.
My screen is has a large number of controls, maybe this is what causes the problem. I'll try to describe it as best, as I can.
First of all, I am using WinForms.
I am making a video game, so the screen should be maximized all the time.
To allow stretching all the controls I am using TablePanels, one large that is docked to fill the whole form and a few smaller that also dock fill the large Table cells. In smaller cells of those tables, Buttons are docked fill.
To show the background drawn buttons, I made control buttons completely transparent. It needs to stay that way.
The screen flickers white at positions of TableLayoutPanels borders.
The screen flickers when a mouse enters the position of a Button, any Button, no matter where it is located.
For now, only one element changes actively during gameplay - a Label. When mouse enters the field of button, this label shows what this button does. For example if I enter the area of "Use" button, the label displays the word "USE".
I haven't tried that yet, but I must implement, that some images of button will change or become transparent, or lose transparency during game-play. Like there could be one image for closed cupboard, but when player opens it, another image of open cupboard appears. I think I know how to do it, all I want is to prevent flickering.
If you suggest using some code (and I expect it will be needed), please specify where I should put it.
It seems problem was solved.
I'll answer my question myself, in case someone else needs it.
The problem was caused by one of labels, although I can't guess why.
I am using a number of TableLayoutPanels, one of them fills the whole form. It has a number of rows, each of them is also a TableLayoutPanel, or just a Panel.
Flickering appeared when I tried to put a label inside main TableLayoutPanel by its own, and not in a sub panel. When I put a Panel inside main Table, and label inside it, the majority of flickering was gone.
To remove it completely, I used both recommendations just in case:
1) DoubleBuffering: Here (answer from Fabjan)
2) Article also recommended by Fabian
After that, only a few minor glitches remained. I did a few tests and it seems that the last glitches happened when mouse left the screen, then returned back inside. My game screen is maximized, so it took some time to check. To fix it, I used an easy command:
"Cursor.Clip = this.Bounds;" on FormLoad
I learned it from another question from this site: Here
Unfortunately, I didn't understand, why misplaced label was behind flickering, but since the problem was solved, I decided to write it here, in case someone else needs it.
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.
I just switched over to WPF from just regular C# .NET for the more advanced UI design controls. I have managed to become extremely confused over what should be extremely simple, and I hope someone can help.
Basically I want to have sections on either side (for the most part these will be list-boxes inside of expanders), one list-box in the bottom-middle, and then a large rich text box taking up the middle.
My understanding was that I could just take a DockPanel, set the ChildFill to true, dock each one where it should go, and leave the last one to fill the space. The list boxes alone don't seem to work at with the DockPanel, and the DockPanel does not seem to expand when I change the size of the window.
So basically my questions are...
1) Why does the DockPanel not expand/shrink when I change the size of the window?
2) Buttons seem to work fine in the Dock Panel (like all of the examples I found) but using List Boxes instead does not seem to work properly. Why is this?
3) If I put the list boxes inside of Expanders instead, if I have say two of these on the left side, and I shrink the top expander, will the bottom expander grow upwards to fill the gap?
I can't really afford anything like ActiPro, and I was not able to get the AvalonDock controls to show up on the MSVC 2010 toolbar, so I am pretty much stuck using the default controls.
1). I have just tested the DockPanel and it does expand / shrink when the Window is resized - Have you removed the Grid that is placed in the Window by default in Visual Studio? If you mean it doesn't resize proportionally to the Windows size then i think you will need to use a Grid.
2). Again, list boxes work fine for me - Can you provide some more detail explaining why they don't work properly?
3). It depends on what you mean by "Grow upwards". If the top expander is closed, only the header will be displayed and the bottom expander will move up to take the space taken by the first expanders content (this is the default behaviour).
Do you have some XAML you can post as this will help identify your problems.
I have a tabcontrol on my form, on each tab I have a control, each of these controls are similar i.e. they each have a table and a couple buttons and each control is set to Dock Fill
When I view them contols in design view something weird is happening, the first tab that is viewable has it controls placed as you would expect and all is fine, but the second and third tab each the controls appear off centre, overlapping the edges of the tab.
I have experimented with placing different controls on different tabs and it appears that if a control is on the first tab it appears fine, if it is on any other it sometimes appears weird.
The really big problem is that this seems to be appearing at run-time as well, but only sometimes.
I've checked the properties of the controls and the tabs but all seems to be the same.
Any advice would be much appreciated.
Kind regards
MeeM
Seems like a bug to me, make sure you have all the latest updates for Visual Studio.
Is this a UserControl that you are placing on a tab? If so, I would check all the layout properties on the user control and the child controls inside the user control. I have had this problem before, but I can't remember off had what I did to fix it.
Try this:
First thing is to verify the z-order of your controls is correct. For that open your Document Outline window (View->Other Windows->Document Outline) and visually check for the order of each control one by one. When setting the docking properties of controls the z-order of the controls is applied in reverse; that is: the first child control shown in the document outline has docking precedence over those at the same level lower in the document outline window.
Verify that no 2 child controls of the same parent (in your case the tabControl) have the DockStyle.Fill. As a good practice with docking, only one of the child controls should have its docking set to Fill. If you have this case it is most likely rethinking your layout flow will allow you to change it and have only one with Fill. The other docking styles (right, left, top, bottom) can be used in more than one child control and they'll never cause any problems. Only Fill is the problematic one.
If 1 nor 2 solved your problem, my advice if to avoid docking altogether and use Anchoring instead. You can essentially get very similar results using the Anchor property of the controls. I actually like this approach more, since is kinda similar to WPF anchoring.
If 1, 2 not 3 solve your problem. Post an image with your document outline and I'll recreate it here, fix it and post the solution here.
Hope it helped!
I assume that these are user controls we are talking about. Have you changed the layout of the control (class) itself since you added the user controls into your tabs? If so, they will not automatically update with the new value (for Dock, width, height, etc.).