Items clipping off-screen for some users in WinForms application - c#

I am experiencing a very strange issue, and unfortunately it is not very reproducible so I don't have a lot to go on.
I have a page in a WinForms application laid out as per the below. Previously it was just a TableLayoutPanel anchored to the top, bottom, left and right, but now it is a Panel Docked into Fill mode with the same anchored TableLayoutPanel inside:
On all computers I have been able to try it on (including with and without Windows' Zoom functions), it displays like the above. However a small number of users experience a screen that looks like the below, with items clipped off screen (this user doesn't have access to the first tab, so it is hidden):
Items are clipped off screen and because of the anchoring, resizing doesn't help, they just expand.
I'm unsure how this is triggered but I think it could be something to do with the zoom of the machine being used for Visual Studio vs the zoom of the machine running the application; with that said I've tried running the application on various different zoom levels and can't reproduce the problem on my end. I have also tried adding a panel docked to Fill the area but that doesn't seem to have done much.
Is this something anyone has seen before with WinForms or can provide any suggestions?

Based on the comment from #rene, I looked at the answers on Creating a DPI-Aware Application - the two parts of the answer that resolved it for me were:
Disable any scaling on the machine(s) being used for development
Run a bulk string-replace across the application's code-base for this.AutoScaleMode = System.Windows.Forms.AutoScaleMode.Dpi; nand replace it with this.AutoScaleMode = System.Windows.Forms.AutoScaleMode.None;, and develop all future forms with the AutoScaleMode set to None

Related

Show C# WinForm on different screens

On my workstation I have developed a WinForm application. With panels, buttons and dropdowns.
After that I applied the application to my laptop.
On my laptop the presentation of the application was not correct. The elements overlap and the buttons are warped.
Can you tell me how to handle this?
I apologize for my english. This text was written with Google translator.
It is a bit difficult to tell from the distance, but I guess the window uses a different size on the laptop and the controls' docking and anchoring are not configured to do what you want. I suggest this and this tutorial on how to configure the properties; this is preferrably done in the designer instead of code for a fixed layout.
I've seen this behavior running Windows with a "display size" setting greater than 100%. Try resetting this value in your display settings:
Make sure to develop your forms on a computer with the system DPI setting set to 100%. Visual Studio will automatically convert your form coordinates depending on this system setting (it's a bug according to me). A quick way to fix a form is to do the following:
Make sure the system DPI setting is set to 100%.
Move a button in the form one pixel to the left. Then move it back again.
Save. Compile. Run.
1.] Either use Anchor or Dock
2.] Or try to fix the minimum and maximum size of your form and disable maximize button

Form1 visual size doesn't match Form1 debug visual size

I'm having a problem that when i debug my application it doesn't match the size i've set in the designer. i've tried to set form minimum size to the desirable values.
The form is built up with a splitpanel, with a panel docked as fill on each side.
The labels have default anchors. Textboxes have anchors left,top,right.
Buttons have anchors left, top.
if i drag the bottom down during runtime i get the size/design i want, but why doesn't it start like that and how can i fix it?
Looks like you're working on quite a high resolution screen. Windows Forms isn't very good with scaling the content and has all kinds of quirks that you need to be aware of. I would move to WPF if possible, but if you really need to continue using Windows Forms, here's what you should do.
Use AutoScaleMode.Dpi on your main form. It'll scale and relocate the controls to match your design when the DPI of the monitor is higher than the default 96 (100%). You could also try AutoScaleMode.Font but it might not work well if you use fonts other than the default (Tahoma 8,25 pt or something like that).
Use TableLayoutPanel or FlowLayoutPanel to make positioning controls easier. FlowLayoutPanel dynamically lays down your controls horizontally or vertically. If you're familiar with WPF or Windows Phone development, it's basically a StackPanel control.
Make sure your screen DPI is 96 (100%) and keep it the same throughout the development. You'll still have to make sure to test the application on other DPI's so that users with different settings will be able to use your application.
Here's more information about DPI scaling:
How to configure an app to run correctly on a machine with a high DPI setting (e.g. 150%)?
How to control the font DPI in .NET WinForms app
Creating a DPI-Aware Application
Edit: Visual Studio's Windows Forms designer shows the form using a different theme than your Windows version so that's one reason why your form looks different in runtime. In runtime the form uses the theme of the operating system currently running the application.

Easy way to do DPI scaling?

So I've been coding a program for a little over a month now, and I've encountered a problem that I have no idea how to tackle. For a while now, I've always been confused when I opened up my program on other computer, and my window size was different. I chalked it up to a different resolution, and figured the problem would be easy to solve later. Then I imported a custom font to my program, and was confused when I noticed the letters where not clear and where blurry. I figured that this was something caused by my specified font size that I was using, and left it as is. Today however, as I was doing some testing I was annoyed by the blurry text enough to go and search online for the problem and solution, only to find out my problem lay within my DPI settings (125% on the computer I had mostly programmed on.)
I have no idea what I can do about this. I started programming a little while ago, and it was hard enough figuring out how to get the custom text working, but I just have no idea where to take this.
I've been coding this program in Visual Studio C# 2010 since it's the only version I've got that won't expire, so I can't use anything that might be in the 2011 or 2012 version.
All I want is for objects to be on the same place on one computer as another with a different DPI. Is there a very simple step-by-step tutorial somewhere that I can read or watch to figure this out?
This code snipshet worked perfectly for me.
http://urenjoy.blogspot.it/2008/11/make-resolution-independent-windows-app.html
(Using Visual Studio Express 2013)
It is required that windows app should have same layout at different resolutions means there should be no effect on layout of app on changing resolution. Here are the steps to do this.
Use table layout panel
Drag control in cell of tablelayoutpanel and set anchor and dock property.
Set rowspan and colspan properties of dragged control to merge cells
Set margin and padding of dragged control with respect to cell.
drag all controls and follow same steps, complete design using tablelayoutpanel
Now set all columns and rows size of tablelayoutpanel = autosize (or in %)
Set tablelayoutpanel properties autosize = true,autosizemode = grow and shrink
Set Forms properties autosize = true,autosizemode = grow and shrink
Run windows app If your windows app opens in maximum state then set tablelayoutpanel dock property =fill.

Program Size Problem made in C#

I have made a program within C# which i have now published from it but a problem occuyrs when i try to install it on different machines to mine. On my computer the program window size is fine but on other computers its sometimes too small and sometimes too big so the user can not properly look at the main screen of the program. I don't know what to do to change this problem, either within the computer settings or possibly in C# in the code of my project. Please Help,
Thanks,
Chris.
Use Dock and Anchor
It sounds like different users have different screen resolutions. Thats just part of developing software for a variety of users, with differing screen options. You should test your app is usable with different settings and possibly adjust font sizes, layout and dimensions accordingly.
If I'm guessing correctly the problem here isn't the screen resolution but that the actual program window changes size, either hiding parts of the program or showing too much? In that case you should take a look in your WPF editor (if you're using WPF, that is) and check the different Layout/Size options.
You need to use the Anchor properties and Dock properties of your controls (inside the form) to allow your program to be resized. If you can successfully resize it on your computer it should work on others too.
Part from that you may want to set the form to fixed size so that users can't resize it.
You can use the Screen class to get the bounds of the available screens, and from there you should be able to tell if your initial window size is too small and adjust it accordingly. You should probably take care to do this once on the initial launch of the application, just in case the user explicitly and intentionally moves/resizes the window so it doesn't completely cover the screen -- you wouldn't want to accidentally obliterate their changes the next time you run (assuming you even save window positions).

visual studio 2005 designer moves controls and resizes Form

When i open a form in visual studio 2005 (c#) the designer automaticaly resize the form and move/resize controls without touching the designer at all. The source file is changed and when i close the designer i'm asked to save the *.cs file.
I tried to look into visual studio options without any success.
any ideas?
visual studio setup or something?
thanks,
Tal
I have been working on this problem for most of today and found some interesting things: The main source of the problem seems to be relying on anchoring. If I use docking to position my controls, instead of anchoring, my problems seem to go away. I found a couple of blog posts from 2003(!), which detail how you might use docking instead of anchoring, and explain how anchoring can break the Windows Forms designer. It seems like this problem might be over 7 years old!
Here are the posts:
http://weblogs.asp.net/rweigelt/archive/2003/09/24/28984.aspx
http://weblogs.asp.net/rweigelt/archive/2003/10/17/32407.aspx
http://weblogs.asp.net/rweigelt/archive/2003/10/23/33181.aspx
This is due to AutoScaleMode-property. Your forms have probably been designed with a different DPI or Font settings than you have now in Windows display settings. AutoScaleMode-property has 4 different possible values : Dpi, Font, Inherit or None. In Dpi or Font mode, your forms and controls will be automatically resized depending on windows display settings.
So, set the AutoScaleMode-property to None in all your forms and controls and they won't be automatically resized anymore. Try to design your forms in order to let sufficient space in every controls so that text will fit even if text size is set to 125%.
I found a work around.
not sure what happens behind but i changed my display properties. and it works fine.
here is the sequence: display propertis->settings tab->advance.
in the the advance dialog i changed the "DPI Settings" from Large (120dpi) to Normal (96 dpi)
Had the same problem with controls anchored top, left and right within complex TabControls. The visual studio forms designer was increasing the width of all nested controls each time I would open the form.
I found a simple workaround thanks to this post. I simply added a panel to each tab and set their dock property to fill. All existing controls within the tabs were moved inside those panels. This works, even if the controls are anchored top, left and right.
Works at least for Visual Studio 2013 and 2015.
This is one you should live with. Even in VS2008 such things happen from time to time. It is mostly depends on form content (controls, positions, etc), and there is no option in VS to disable such behavior.
When you open your form in designer, vs runtime rebuilds visual appearance from code behind. And sometimes it made changes at this moment. Also when you are simply adding one control to form, designer fully rebuilds codebehind and resource files. This is well known issue, and seems that MS won't fix it, because they move in WPF direction.
So several points to simplify your life:
Move to VS2008, designer were more consistent, but still shuffle controls in .designer.cs file
Place your code in one of the source repositories, so if you accidentally saved such form, you can restore it from repositary.
Setting the form Min and Max size settings to the current size was a good work around for me. This prevented VS from resizing it.
I had a trivial form with few controls on it, where the OK and Cancel at the bottom were being shifted up as soon as the form was opened in the VS2013 designer. The same behaviour was observed in VS2015.
The accepted answer here of DPI did not solve the issue for me, nor were there any issues on the size of the form/padding/margins.
Removing the controls that are shifted and adding them back into the form solved the problem for me, as suggested by ptutt here:
Visual Studio designer moving controls and adding grid columns when form is opened
While I appreciate ryantum's suggestion and links of using docking [with panels], as also referred to in the link above with Roland's blog post here https://weblogs.asp.net/rweigelt/28984, with something so trivial I'd rather just make it go away with removing/adding back in.
I found locking the controls from the format menu was a simple and effective solution. VS2013
I had this problem with VS 2015.
I used dock panels with the controls that moved unexpectedly as their childs.
By default the controls will be aligned to the left, but you can change the orientation.
My buttons stopped moving.
I had this issue, too. Every time I opened the designer, every box with anchor "right" was moved about 20 Pixels to the left. Additionally, the bottom of every box with anchor "left" was about 200 pixels outside the form.
This form has many controls and should not shrink on smaller displays, so it was set to autoscroll, the form itself was smaller in the designer than the shown minimum size (historically...). I just set the size to the minimum size so that no scroll bars appeared in the designer and the anchors worked as expected without screwing up the postitions.
I read the first post from ryantm's answer which led me to the solution. Apparently it has something to do with the order .Net executes events such as setting the size of a form.

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