I have a Windows Forms form in C#.
It is just like a regular Windows GUI application. However I am facing problems making the different components on the form resize themselves according to the window size. I mean I do not exactly know which property of the component is to be changed.
I have a tabPage in the form. The tabPage contains a splitcontainer which has 2 panels in it.
The left panel contains a treeView and the right panel has components like radio buttons, textboxes, comboBox and buttons,etc
When I run my application and resize the window (either by dragging a corner of the window or by hitting the maximize button on top right corner) the Windows Forms form and the tabPage expand but the split container doesn't. It stays where it was. Also I want to anchor the split container so that if I shrink my window, the split cointainer still remain on top left. I am sorry I cannot put screenshots here.
Just set the Anchor property of the SplitContainer to Top, Left, Right, Bottom. Or experiment setting the Dock property to Fill.
Have you tried using a TableLayoutPanel? Windows Forms doesn't have great layout support (compared with, say, Java and WPF) but TLP works reasonably well - until you find a situation where it doesn't do what you want, and then it's a pain :)
Related
I'm working on a C# application's UI that has the following structure:
Main Form (MDI Parent)
Tree View
Multiple MDI Childdren, each containing:
Custom User Control
I'd like to separate the form's canvas space allocated for the Tree View from that where the MDI Children are allowed to move in. To that extent, I tried a SplitContainer and setting the MDI Child's TopLevel field to 'false', but, besides the fact that newly created MDI Children were created behind the old ones, I also had issues with them not being cleared properly from the screen and other weird issues.
As I don't have lots of experience with UIs in C#, is the path I am taking correct? Would it be easier to change the above structure so that it doesn't use MDI anymore, or is there a simpler way of dividing the canvas between the tree view and the MDIs, other than the SplitContainer?
Cheers,
Alex
UPDATE: Actually, the solution seems to work quite nicely, thanks! I'll probably be able to stop the widgets from moving in the wrong place by placing a simple check.
Besides that, is there any way in which I could make the TreeView resizable without involving a SplitContainer (because of the reasons mentioned in the post)?
Add a Panel to your Main Form and Dock it to the Left. Now add your TreeView to the Panel. Resize the Panel as necessary. Now your MdiChildren will take up the empty space to the right of the Panel...
*You can actually simply Dock the TreeView itself to the Left side of the Form, but the Panel approach would allow you to place other controls in that left side area as well. Just depends on your UI layout.
I got Panel 1 and Panel 2 using splitContainer in the Windows form. I want to keep the original size of the Panel 1 . I just want to maximize the size of the Panel 2 from the original starting point when I maximize the form in the interface.
I tried to change the setting in the splitContainer properties dock but i couldn't succeed....
How can I maximize the Panel 2 alone ????
When I checked this link, there is no solution for my problem. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953934
Set the SplitContainer.FixedPanel property to whichever panel you want to keep fixed, or use simple panels and anchor them properly to your needs.
I have a window with a popup that pops when an item in a listview is double clicked.
It centers to the main window and looks really nice floating there.
The problem is when the user moves the main window or selects another program, and the popup floats on top of other stuff.
I would like to have something like a popup, meaning that it floats on top of other elements in the window, but sticks with the main window when it moves (stays centered), and doesn't float on top of other programs.
Can I make a popup act like this, or is there a better way to do it?
Popups will not move while the window is resized or moved. Because, Popups/Context menus are not the part of Visual Tree. You have to use Adorner for this. I will suggest to read this four part series for a quick start on Adorner.
It's possible that an Adorner will fit your needs in this case better than a popup. Adorners can float above your window, too. There are a few differences, mainly that an adorner is bound to a UIElement (which include windows).
If you are willing to use a third-party/open source (MS-PL) option, the Extended WPF Toolkit has a ChildWindow control.
It's technically not a separate window, but it appears to be a separate window to the user.
I have not found a way to make Popups stop doing that in WPF
As an alternative, you can create a UserControl which acts like a Popup.
Usually I host the content section of the app along with the Popup within a Canvas control, and when IsPopupOpen gets changed to True I set the popup Visibility = Visible.
I'm converting an app from ASP.NET WebForms to WinForms. There is one asp.net page which contains a ListView/Repeater that contains several custom controls, which in turn contain a ListView with other custom controls. Basically the layout looks like a TreeView, but on each node/leaf there are few controls like comboboxes, etc.
When this is in ASP.NET, the page automatically lays itself out, so it is several screens tall - if I add 20 buttons into a Panel, it will grow and the browser will get scrollbars.
I'd like to do the same thing in a WinForms application - so I'll have a user control that will contain a lot of controls in a some variation of Panel (Flow, Table layout), and the controls might have another controls inside them, etc.
The problem is, that when I make winforms app, each control has specific height in the design time. I'd like some user controls to be able to grow with their contents - so they'll add up. In the main Form, there should be a vertical scrollbar, just like in the web browser when the generated page is taller than the screen.
I'd just like to get some general pointers in the right direction. Thanks.
Use Anchor and Dock container properties.
Yes, to expound on Anchor and Dock...try this
-Place a Panel on an empty form, and set its dock property to Top
-place a textbox in the panel, and Dock it to Full...it should fill the whole top panel
-Place a splitter on the form, and if not already docked correctly, set its dock to top
-place another panel below the splitter, and set its Dock to Fill
-place another textbox inside the lower panel and fill it as as well
Now you have a form with two resiable textboxes and will resize when the form does.
*you may have to set the textbox MultiLine property to true but not sure.
Hope this helps.
Anchor the controls to the parent. Anchoring all four sides will cause it to stretch.
If the Anchoring and Docking answers don't work for you, there is another option. It's not pretty, but you can access a control's properties and change them dynamically during runtime. You'd do something like: if(listBox.Items.Count > [yourVal]) listBox.height = [yourFormula] or something.
It's been a while since I've done a Win Form (and I don't have my IDE fired up at the moment) but I'm pretty sure there's even a ScrollPanel or other scrolling control that you can set on your form.
That said, when you're working with WinForms, the less scrolling you can make your users do, the better.
I'm creating a User Control that's basically a Panel (with random content inside), and I need to be able to scroll up and down this Panel using buttons (up and down) rather than the scrollbar.
The reason I have to do it this way is because the program will be used on a touch screen monitor and we need big buttons rather than an ugly little scrollbar.
I've been messing around with the VerticalScrollbar properties, and none of them seem to do anything. I've noticed that if I set AutoScroll to false, AutoScrollPosition actually shows coordinates, except negative of what it should be. Also, I've noticed that panel.VerticalScrollbar.Visible = true; only seems to work when placed outside of the constructor. Is there a reason for that?
Basically, WinForms' scrollbars are very confusing (buggy?) to me. Does anyone know a good way to scroll up and down a panel programmatically with buttons (I don't care if I need to have an invisible scrollbar).
Thank you! =D
Make your UserControl a regular UserControl (i.e inherit from UserControl instead of Panel) and place a Panel on your UserControl. Put any content/controls on the inner Panel, and then change the Panel's Left and Top properties to move it around without scrollbars. You could also add buttons to your UserControl to handle the movement of the inner Panel.
A simpler way, however, might be to just use really wide/high scrollbars, and set their Thumbwidth (I think this is the property) to the same large value - this will produce scrollbars that are easy to use with the fingers. To my knowledge there's no way to do this with the scrollbars that appear on a Panel with Autoscroll set to True, so you'd still need to use the method I mentioned above (with an inner Panel sitting on your UserControl) and add the scrollbars to move it yourself.
I agree that scrollbars in Windows suck, so while I'm normally in favor of just using the standard controls that everyone is used to, I don't see anything wrong with rolling your own in this case.