Also asked at http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/wpf/thread/f765d4c9-1719-4757-b467-2492d87bb4ab
All,
I have a slider that performs a scale-transform in my WPF App. Now I'm running into an issue where I have an element inside of a scrollviewer inside of a row that has Height="*" and another element in a subsequent row that has Height="Auto".
The goal is that we don't know the row heights until run-time (or even how big the elements will be), but that we will have both elements displayed on the screen, with the first element taking up as much space as it can and the bottom element always being visible, taking up whatever space it needs.
I have the following problem/solution statement (which I think best describes my issue) and, as you can see, I'm stuck at what to do when I want to achieve this goal and still allow access to all UI elements should the zoom be large enough to push one of the elements off the screen (hopefully that made sense).
Problem statement:
ScaleTransform is causing top DG to disappear where RowDefinition Height="*"
Solution:
Set Minimum height on RowDefinition to prevent DG from disappearing.
Problem statement:
Setting Minimum height on RowDefinitoin causes lower rows to dissapear.
Solution:
Add scrollviewer encapsulating grid.
Problem statement:
Since top DG is in RowDefinition Height="*", if there is a lot of data in top DG, bottom DGs cannot be seen without scrolling.
Solution statement:
???
Here's my current code:
<Grid.RowDefinitions>
<RowDefinition Height="*" MinHeight="120" />
<RowDefinition Height="Auto" />
</Grid.RowDefinitions>
<GroupBox Grid.Row="0">
<DataGrid ItemsSource="{Binding Path=SomePathThatCouldHaveLotsOfData}">
<!--Note that DataGrid implements its own scrollviewer as long as it's not surrounded by another scrollviewer-->
<!--...-->
</DataGrid>
</GroupBox>
<GroupBox Grid.Row="1">
<!--...-->
</GroupBox>
Hopefully that all made sense what my issue is and what I'm trying to do. Any ideas how I can get this done (hopefully in a clean way). I'm using MVVM if it helps.
EDIT: I should point out that I also won't know any max-height until run-time (and max-height is probably irrelevant anyway since we'll be using scale-transform).
All,
I managed to acheive my goal, but it was a bit of an ugly hack.
Basically, I had to trap the Loaded and SizeChanged event of my UserControl/Page/Window and use these events to set the ScrollViewer.ViewPortHeight value to a property in my VM. Then, it was simply a matter of subtracting a known value from this to use as my Max value. Then, it was simply a matter of multiplying the ViewPortHeight by the percentage that I wanted each UI element to take up on the screen and bind the UIs element to that.
Hopefully this will help someone else having the same business requirement.
Related
I hope this isn't a duplicate but I can't find any documentation or examples on how to actually use ScrollToVerticalOffset(). I'm using it in a Windows Phone 8 app, but I think it will still apply to WP7 and Silverlight (although, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong).
So here is my basic set up (pseudo-code from memory):
<phone.PivotItem>
<ScrollViewer>
<Grid Height="1500">
<Grid.RowDefinitions>
<!-- about 20 rows, all auto-height -->
</Grid.RowDefinitions>
<Border Grid.Row="0">
<TextBox x:Name="txt1" />
</Border>
<Border Grid.Row="1">
<TextBox x:Name="txt2" />
</Border>
<!-- ...... -->
<Border Grid.Row="19">
<TextBox x:Name="txt20" />
</Border>
</Grid>
</ScrollViewer>
</phone.PivotItem>
So as you can see, I've got a ScrollViewer within a PivotItem, and inside is a Grid. In the Grid there are about 20 TextBoxs, each within a Border. I am dynamically setting focus to one of these TextBoxs when this page loads, so anytime I set focus to TextBox #6-20 (roughly) - I have to manually scroll down to see it. I want to auto-scroll my ScrollViewer so that whichever TextBox has focus, it will be centered for the user to see.
The documentation for ScrollToVerticalOffset() says:
Scrolls the content that is within the ScrollViewer to the specified
vertical offset position.
And that it accepts a type of System.Double.
What I don't understand is A) the value I'm supposed to pass, and B) how I could even get that value? Is it supposed to be a number between 0 and the height of my Grid (1500)? If so, how could I determine the position of any given TextBox so I can scroll to it?
If there are any straightforward examples, please feel free to link out to them. I'm not sure if the content within the ScrollViewer matters when calling this method, but in case it does I wanted to show exactly how I'm using it.
Many thanks in advance!
You can see any UIElement's position relative to another UIElement using the UIElement.TransformToVisual call.
First, get the transform between the TextBox and ScrollViewer.
GeneralTransform transform = textBox.TransformToVisual(scrollViewer);
Then, figure out what point (0,0) of the TextBox is relative to the ScrollViewer. Meaning, the TextBox origin (0,0) is located at what ScrollViewer position.
Point textBoxPosition = transform.Transform(new Point(0, 0));
Now that you know the Y position of the TextBox relative to the ScrollViewer, scroll to that Y offset.
scrollViewer.ScrollToVerticalOffset(textBoxPosition.Y);
Good luck!
This is a very old post, but the meaning of VerticalOffset varies.
Most of the solutions I have seen assume VeritcalOffset is in pixels. This is not always the case.
From: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.windows.controls.scrollviewer.extentheight
If CanContentScroll is true, the values of the ExtentHeight, ScrollableHeight,
ViewportHeight, and VerticalOffset properties are number of items. If
CanContentScroll is false, the values of these properties are Device Independent Pixels.
I have the following structure in my WPF application. (Using Prism and Regions)
Window---->
UserControl---->
DockPanel------>
Grid(2X2)------>Row0Col0--
Grid (2X1)------>
ItemsControl------>
UserControl(injected into ItemsControl with Prism)----->
DockPanel----->
DataGrid.(60 rows, 10 columns)
The behavior that I expect is that the DataGrid will size itself to fit the size of the grid cell and display both scrollbars because it is too big to fit. But it doesnt. It remains its maximum size and cuts out of the edges of the grid cell. All cells of both grids have no size specifications (Auto Sized). When I explicitly specify datagrid's height and width, I see the scrollbars, but of course I don't want to do that.
Please help!.
Thanks
I have saved the screenshots at the following link.
http://s1199.photobucket.com/albums/aa467/vikasgoyalgzs/
You say: "All cells of both grids have no size specifications (Auto Sized)" - this is where the problem is. When the grid cell is auto sized the grid gives the content in that cell as much space as it wants (doesn't matter if it fits in the window or not). To fix it you have to put your DataGrid into a star-sized cell.
<Grid>
<Grid.RowDefinitions>
<RowDefinition Height="Auto"/>
<RowDefinition Height="*"/>
</Grid.RowDefinitions>
<Border Grid.Row="0">
<!-- Content that will take as much space as it wants -->
</Border>
<Border Grid.Row="1">
<!-- Content that will take all the remaining space -->
</Border>
</Grid>
UPDATE: Based on the screenshots you provided...
First, get rid of the DockPanel in the top level control. DockPanel gives its child all the space it asks for. If it is not a "fill" child (LastChildFill="True"). Use grid instead of DockPanel (i.e. at the top level a grid with two rows - one auto-sized for the menu and the second star-size for the rest of the stuff, the in that star-size row put another grid for you items controls, etc.).
Remember, whenever you put the content either in an auto-size cell in a grid or in a DockPanel with dock type different than Fill, the content will take as much space as it required without showing a scroll bar (it will go beyond the window).
UPDATE 2: Looking at the new screenshots (see comments to this post)...
OK, I think I see the problem. The thing is that ItemsControl uses StackPanel to display its children, but StackPanel also gives its children all the space they want (your DataGrid thinks that it has enough space to render itself without scroll bars).
To fix that you need to put your items controls inside an ScrollViewer like this:
<ScrollViewer VerticalScrollBarVisibility="Auto"
HorizontalScrollBarVisibility="Auto">
<ItemsControl ... />
</ScrollViewer>
I'm trying to do something which seems like it should be extremely simple and yet I can't see how. I have a very simple layout, a TextBox with an image next to it, similar to the way it might look adorned with an ErrorProvider in a WinForms application. The problem is, I want the image to be no higher than the TextBox it's next to. If I lay it out like this, say:
<Grid>
<Grid.RowDefinitions>
<RowDefinition Height="Auto"/>
</Grid.RowDefinitions>
<Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
<ColumnDefinition Width="Auto"/>
<ColumnDefinition Width="Auto"/>
</Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
<TextBox Grid.Row="0" Grid.Column="0" MinWidth="100"/>
<Image Grid.Row="0" Grid.Column="1" Source="error.png" />
</Grid>
the row will size to the height of the image if the image is taller than the TextBox. This also happens if I use a DockPanel or StackPanel.
The naive solution would be to bind the Height to the TextBox's ActualHeight. I'm sure this is wrong. But what's right?
Edit
Here's an example of what looks wrong to me: In both of these layouts (which are both horizontal StackPanels), the FontSize is the only variable:
You can see that the first TextBox is constrained to the height of the icon, and as a result has an unnecessary bottom padding under the text. And the icon next to the second is out of scale to the TextBox it's next to.
As it happens, I found a completely different (and much better) way to approach the problem - originally I was scaling my layout by changing the FontSize on the Window, but using a ScaleTransform is a whole lot easier and seems to work perfectly. But even so, it still seems odd to me that it's so hard to do this.
Name your TextBox, reference the TextBox from the Image as follows.
<TextBox Name="myTextBox"
Grid.Row="0" Grid.Column="0"
MinWidth="100"/>
<Image Grid.Row="0"
Grid.Column="1"
Source="error.png"
Height="{Binding ActualHeight, ElementName=myTextBox}"/>
You want a layout algorithm that measures the other elements with a height constraint equal to the desired height of a specific one. While several of the existing Panel implementations will reduce the available space for remaining elements based on the size used by previous ones, none of them will set the constraint the way you want. If you want the behavior you describe in a single layout pass, you will need to write your own layout algorithm.
For example, you can get close by overriding the behavior of StackPanel like this:
public class SizeToFirstChildStackPanel
: StackPanel
{
protected override Size MeasureOverride(Size constraint)
{
if (Children.Count > 0)
{
var firstChild = Children[0];
firstChild.Measure(constraint);
if (Orientation == Orientation.Horizontal)
{
constraint = new Size(
constraint.Width,
Math.Min(firstChild.DesiredSize.Height, constraint.Height));
}
else
{
constraint = new Size(
Math.Min(firstChild.DesiredSize.Width, constraint.Width),
constraint.Height);
}
}
return base.MeasureOverride(constraint);
}
}
This will constrain the height of all children of the StackPanel to the desired height of the first one (or width if the panel is oriented vertically).
It's still not ideal because the first child will get measured a second time by the base class MeasureOverride, and the second measure will have a constraint. This is extra work, and will cause odd behavior if the first child wants to get larger.
To do it right you would need to implement the entire MeasureOverride method method yourself. I'm not going to do that here because it would be a lot of code that isn't really relevant to the problem, and it depends on how exactly you want the layout to work. The important point is to measure the specific element first and use its DesiredSize to determine the availableSize when you call Measure on the others.
HI, i need to have a resolution independant UI in silverlight application. Will it support implicitly or should it be taken care in code behind doing ScaleTransform ?
will it support multiple browsers as well ?
Thanks in advance.
You can use The ViewBox control in the Silverlight Toolkit to do the scale transforming. It will work on all supported browsers.
You can also set the UserControl width and height to Auto (or remove them) and then have your UI stretch (but not resize) to rules that you set up (typically with a Grid control).
Okay, I figured I will outline all the methods that you can make use of the implicit methods that Silverlight allow for specifying sizing.
If you define anything using the Stretch setting for VerticalAlignment option in a control:
<TextBox Grid.Column="0" Grid.Row="0" VerticalAlignment="Stretch" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch"/>
The UIElement will stretch to take up all the space available to it in its parent control. Another setting such as this is to do something like defining a grid column width or row height like this:
<ColumnDefinition Width="*"/>
This will take up all the space available on the screen.
You can grow columns and rows of the grid in a ratio form:
<RowDefinition Height="3*"/>
<RowDefinition Height="2*"/>
This will grow the height of the first row by 3px for each 2px that the second one grows.
Then you can have options such as Auto
<ColumnDefinition Width="Auto"/>
This will grow the UIElement according to size requirements. If a child of the element requires more size, the element will take up more screen space.
And finally:
<TextBox Grid.Column="1" Grid.Row="0" Height="100" MinWidth="200" MaxWidth="400" x:Name="text"/>
These are fixed values and ensures that given any resolution that the element will not take up more than 400px in width but no less than 200px. It also indicates that the height of the element should always be 100px. This is useful for elements such as buttons etc. which you do not want to grow or shrink as the resolution changes.
Finally, you will probably want to wrap a ScrollViewer around the whole thing, just to ensure that elements off the screen can be scrolled to. This can happen when your view requires more space than available on the screen or have elements set to Auto.
The UserControl I'm trying to work with is essentially laid out like so:
<Grid>
<Grid.RowDefinitions>
<Row Height="*"/>
<Row Height="*"/>
</Grid.RowDefinitions>
<wpftoolkit:DataGrid x:Name="PrimaryGrid"/> <!-- ~10 rows -->
<Border>
<Grid>
<Grid.RowDefinitions>
<Row Height="*"/>
<Row Height="*"/>
</Grid.RowDefinitions>
<wpftoolkit:DataGrid x:Name="SecondaryGrid"/> <!-- ~2 rows -->
<wpftoolkit:DataGrid x:Name="OtherGrid"/> <!-- ~50 rows -->
</Grid>
</Border>
</Grid>
This UserControl is then placed in my Window as the last member of a Grid, the only one with Height="*". I'm having problems with the way the DataGrids are sized.
If I set VerticalAlignment of the UserControl to Stretch in the Window, then PrimaryGrid gets 1/2 height of the UserControl, and each of the two inside the Border get 1/4. They are sized like this regardless of the number of rows each have, leaving OtherGrid with too little vertical space and the others with non-row whitespace inside the scrollview.
If I set VerticalAlignment to Top, the grids seem to size pretty well to their contents, except there is an inexplicable whitespace being left at the bottom of the UserControl. I used Snoop and the RowDefinition for the UserControl has the proper ActualHeight, but the UserControl only uses a portion of it - 80% or so.
I don't really mind whether I fix the Stretch case (How do I make the DataGrid not stretch larger than its number of rows?) or the Top case (How do I make the UserControl use all the space it has available to it?)
Summary: Use Stretch for the UserControl, but Auto (instead of *) for the row heights inside your UserControl.
Explanation: "Auto" means: as much space as needed (which is what you want), whereas "*" means: a proportional share of all available space (resulting in the 1/2, 1/4, 1/4-distribution).
Since you want the UserControl to use all available space, Stretch is the correct option (it means exactly that). Set one of the row heights inside the UserControl back to "*", if you want this row to take up the remaining available space.
This is a common problem where what you really want is 2 completely different layout behaviors: Auto sizing when there's room for all three, * sizing when there isn't. Some quick fixes you can try out with limitations:
Auto sizing (as already mentioned)
DockPanel with each set to Dock=Top - this will have a similar effect to VerticalAlignment=Top but the last DataGrid (only 1) will stretch out to fill the remaining space. Also bad if the first or second take up more space than exists because they'll push the others out.
Set MinHeight/MaxHeight in combination with one of the other 2 changes on your DataGrids to keep them from getting out of control. This gives up some of the auto-layout flexibility in exchange for making sure everything shows up.
Beyond those you can try something more complex like creating a custom Panel (or find one that someone else made already), or creating a MultiValueConverter that can calculate appropriate Height (or MinHeight, MaxHeight) settings for each DG or Row based on the height of the UC and each of the DGs.
Well, here's what I ended up with. It does what I want from a layout point of view, mostly. A bit more code behind than I'd like, but oh well.
In my DataContextChanged event handler:
//for each grid
_reportObserver = new PropertyObserver<ItemCollection>(PrimaryGrid.Items)
.RegisterHandler(c => c.Count, c => UpdateMaxHeight(PrimaryGrid));
UpdateMaxHeight(PrimaryGrid);
PropertyObserver is from http://joshsmithonwpf.wordpress.com/2009/07/11/one-way-to-avoid-messy-propertychanged-event-handling/
//Lots of ugly hard-coding
private void UpdateMaxHeight(DataGrid grid)
{
double header_height = grid.ColumnHeaderHeight;
if (double.IsNaN(header_height))
header_height = 22;
double margin_height = grid.Margin.Bottom + grid.Margin.Top;
grid.MaxHeight = header_height + margin_height + grid.Items.Count * (grid.RowHeight+2);
UpdateLayout(); //this is key for changes to number of items at runtime
}
Even after setting the DataGrid's MaxHeight, things were still ugly, so I had to set the max height on the RowDefinition's too. But that still wasn't right, causing the margin_height addition above.
<RowDefinition Height="*" MaxHeight="{Binding ElementName=PrimaryGrid, Path=MaxHeight}"/>
At some point, I'll take into account my optionally visible row details in my ugly max height code.
As far as Top vs Stretch, I ended up for other reasons having the usercontrol in a ListView. Everything sizes nicely now.
Thanks again for looking at my problem.
Just wanted to follow up on this problem. Over time, the solution I provided above just did not meet users expectations. I've now changed to a scheme like this:
<ScrollViewer VerticalScrollBarVisibility="Auto">
<Grid>
<!-- row definitions -->
<KentBoogart's Resizer ResizeDirection="South">
<DataGrid/>
</kb:Resizer>
<kb:Resizer ResizeDirection="South">
<DataGrid/>
</kb:Resizer>
</Grid>
</ScrollViewer>
In another place where I've used this idiom, I've set the Resizer to have a MaxHeight bound to the ScrollViewer's ActualHeight to keep it from going out of control. This design can be a little confusing with the overall scrollbar, plus scrollbars in the DataGrid, but with good borders and margins, it's not too bad.