I have a fairly simple user control that represents a basic login control. So it has a couple labels, text boxes, and a button. I would like this user control to fill its container, so I have set its dock mode to fill. So far easy enough.
Now, I would like all the controls in my user control to be centered based on whatever size my user control is when rendered. I can't think of a anchor / dock combination that will do the trick.
The user control has a ReSize event. So I know I can calculate and move the controls based on my User control's size during that event. But I was hoping this issue was common enough to be handled through the designer if I desired.
It is actually all pretty simple. You just have to turn off all anchor properties, and set dock to none.
Look at the TableLayoutPanel control and use it in conjunction with the docking and anchor properties. You should be able to control the layout fairly precisely that way.
Related
When I expand the window, the textbox contained in it is not expanded. Can I expand it automatically when I expand whole app?
I can not find property for this
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.textbox%28v=vs.71%29.aspx
The Anchor property in the designer. Set it to Left,Right,Top,Bottom. This will cause the size of the text box to be linked to the size of its parent control.
Anchor and Dock Properties
These two properties are especially useful when you are designing your form. Ensuring that a window doesn't become a mess to look at if the user decides to resize the window is far from trivial, and numerous lines of code have been written to achieve this. Many programs solve the problem by simply disallowing the window from being resized, which is clearly the easiest way around the problem, but not the best. The Anchor and Dock properties that have been introduced with .NET lets you solve this problem without writing a single line of code.
The Anchor property is used to to specify how the control behaves when a user resizes the window. You can specify if the control should resize itself, anchoring itself in proportion to its own edges, or stay the same size, anchoring its position relative to the window's edges.
The Dock property is related to the Anchor property. You can use it to specify that a control should dock to an edge of its container. If a user resizes the window, the control will continue to be docked to the edge of the window. If, for instance, you specify that a control should dock with the bottom of its container, the control will resize itself to always occupy the bottom part of the screen, no matter how the window is resized. The control will not be resized in the process; it simply stays docked to the edge of the window.
try using the property "Dock", if you are working with winforms
I am intersted whather I can make controls like treeview, RTF or tabcontrols resizable (I guess I can) and how. I know about using splitters but those only enable to make two areas to "overlap".
Thank you!
You can set the control's Dock property to Fill. This will cause the control to fill it's parent container.
You may still need to write some code to handle laying out the child controls. You can either do this by handling the Resize event, or by using a container that supports resizing for you (such as FlowLayoutPanel or TableLayoutPanel).
The easiest way is to anchor the controls to the container they are in. Then, when the container is resized, the controls will be resized as well. Check out the Anchor property of the controls. You can set the control to anchor to the left, right, top, bottom of the container or any combination of those.
I have a panel that has lots of labels and checkboxes. I want to grab all these controls and resize them?
How would I do this? Would this be like going through the panel for all the controls then resizing them?
Or do you think it would be better to re render the whole form again with the new sizes. However this would require me to do another request to the webservice to get the information.
I need to resize the controls because I want allow user to switch from portrait mode to landscape.
Use Dock, or for more precise control use the Anchor property. By setting Anchor to Left, Right, Top, Bottom the control will scale with the window. By setting Anchor to Right the control will move with the right border. By setting Anchor to Top and Bottom the control will scale vertically, but have a fixed width.
you can also use tablelayoutpanel and flowlayoutpanel controls.
For mobile, I think these controls are not available.
First of all, you should not just store the values from the web service in controls. They should be safely tucked away in one or more objects somewhere, to be easily accessed from your form.
I'm afraid you ahve to resize and/or change location of your controls depending on which mode you are in.
For developing resolution aware applications for .NET CF, see here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms838174.aspx
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.
I have a user control that has:
a) a buttons panel at the top (it always has to be visible)
b) a panel with controls that are dynamically added and re-sized at run-time. The controls can be many, so the panel has to be scrollable.
This user control will be hosted in a form, with the following requirements:
a) The initial size of the form will try to fit in maximum part of the dynamic content.
b) On changing the form size, the control has to be re-sized accordingly.
I had played with various anchoring, docking, and auto-sizing and I don't quite get it working in the way I want to. Sometimes, it is the scrolling that messes up, sometimes it is something else.
What combination of anchoring, docking, and auto-sizing of the panels, usercontrol, form should work best to achieve the desired outcome?
I succeeded to meet the requirements. Here is my solution:
The dynamic panel is anchored to the top and the bottom of the control. It does not AutoSize, it manually changes its MaximumSize and PreferredSize after change in the contents.
The form hosts the form using:
cntrl.AutoSize = true;
cntrl.AutoSizeMode = System.Windows.Forms.AutoSizeMode.GrowAndShrink;
cntrl.Dock = System.Windows.Forms.DockStyle.Fill;
The form subscribes to a custom control's event that notifies for the preferredHeight and it changes its own Height accordingly.
I'd go with a table layout panel. You can specify two rows by one column with the exact size for the buttons at the top and fill the rest with the bottom. Then put put either a normal panel or a flowlayoutpanel for the dynamic content in that area.
Without knowing the specifics of your problem I find multiple fill docked split containers with one fixed panel and/or a fixed slider usually creates a really handy resizing experience. You can also collapse panels very effectively too.