Following the guide here, I have created a full-screen WPF application. But I met a problem: the various size & resolution of screens. For example, I want to put several sprites on the screen as buttons; but they are located at different positions in each screen, and even different to what shown in the XAML designer.
I have searched all over without a clue got. How can I fix this problem? (to make the buttons appears the exact place (in the center), and better, help the xaml designer reflect exactly what will happens when the program is running). Any help will be appreciated.
UPDATE: I'm defining my page as a Canvas inside the Window element. Actually I like Canvas more, cause I can easily put my sprites anywhere, not like a grid.
In general, you should not use pixel values in WPF.
Instead, you should layout your content in <Grid>s with rows and columns, and it will automatically expand to fill the screen (based on the alignments and row / column definitions).
Avoid using the canvas. Also, do not rely too much on the designer to build your layout. Using Grids, Stackpanels and/or Dockpanels will give much better results (and scale when resizing your window). For example, if you use only the designer and drag-and-dropp all your elements, the designer often puts huge margins a bit randomly and this will not always scale properly if you resize your window.
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I'm having a problem with auto sizing all of the controls on my WPF. I'm able to get them too stay on the side of the screen where I want them, the only problem is that, when I have the window the same size as the editor, it looks perfect, however, when I change too full screen (Has too be full screen), it centers everything rather then stretching too fit across the entire window.
Any idea how I could go about fixing this? I have provided a few photos.
After doing a lot of research, I found putting it in a panel, and then making the panel Anchor too none and then setting the Alignment too none, it fixed the windowed version but not full screen version. Any help would be great.
I'm setting the window too full screen with this.WindowState = FormWindowState.Maximized; if that makes any difference at all?
The grid should help you with that, just define columnas and rows. Then put the controls inside the rows and change the alignment (vertical and horizontal) to stretch and you are done.
You will have a problem with the text size, that need tl be managed in code behind or in your viewmodel
If you want a control to span on múltiple rows or multiple columns use the grid.rowspan and grid. Columnspan properties.
Sorry for the bad formatting, im on the phone
Alright, so I'm trying to figure out the best way to accomplish this for my rather unique case. I have a fullscreen WPF application where controls are added to a Grid dynamically and the user is given the option to freely move/resize them. The controls can be individually moved or resized anywhere on the parent Grid but I have prevented them from overlapping via their MouseMove events. They also cannot be moved outside of their container. Since the app will be running on machines with different monitor sizes, I need to take that into consideration when making the original layout. I have an initial layout that I would like to use, but it would seem that I'm out of options:
I first tried using rows and columns just to (initially) place the controls that are added. This method places them correctly but becomes a problem when I need to move or resize the elements because the control is already assigned to a particular row and column. I could try to use this method and then remove any rows/columns after placing the controls, but I don't think that would work well.
I've also considered a Viewbox, but that's not practical in my case for fairly obvious reasons (as it merely resizes the controls to fit the screen). I'd prefer not to use this because I would only need it to standardize my initial layout. That's it. I also don't want to mess up any text that will be displayed on the window.
So yeah, this is more of a "best practice" question because any solution I can think of would not look very professional or elegant. Feel free to ask any questions if you need clarification.
Edit: As an additional note, I'd prefer to stick with a Grid as opposed to a Canvas as my container.
Edit 2: Just to be clear, I would not need the specific (inital) layout after the first launch. When the program exits, the layout (Margins, Width & Heights, etc. for each element) is saved to a file to use for the next launch.
I've developed a number of kiosk/interactive applications using WPF. If you are trying to show the element transitions (while moving), then it might be best to use a parent Canvas and bind the Canvas.Left and Canvas.Top properties. You can mimic the grid alignment, using a Canvas, if you put in place mechanisms (e.g. Manipulation/Mouse events, converters) to make sure that the Canvas attached properties adjust to the row/column offsets.
It is not uncommon at all to use the Viewbox to mitigate display differences (and your use case is not "rather unique"). You set the Viewbox to a target resolution (e.g. 1920x1080) and allow the control to fill the available space. The other alternative would be to dynamically apply a content template based on the application window size/ratio.
After looking at multiple options, I've decided to just use a calculation to (sort of) simulate the behavior of rows/columns. Because my application is fullscreen, I can take my SystemParameters.PrimaryScreenWidth and SystemParameters.PrimaryScreenHeight to orient my layout. Using a combination of universal padding (static values) and ratio-based calculations (dynamic values), I can smoothly set my initial layout.
For instance, I'm dividing the width of my monitor by 6 (rounded up to avoid decimals) and using that (minus half the control's width) as the control's Margin.Left property, centering it on a 'column' of sorts.
Honestly, my initial layout is fairly simple right now, so we'll see if this will suffice going forward. Thanks to everyone who contributed to the question, and sorry if I was unclear on what I was asking.
For this question, it would be helpful if you download these two images:
DataGrid in Main TabItem:
Very Similar DataGrid in Secondary TabItem:
If you switch them rapidly with the Windows Viewer, you will notice some subtle differences:
(a) The background color
(b) The margins
Since my objective is to make those TabItems almost identical (minus a couple extra fields in the 2nd one), I am told that all I need to do is modify the value some border and/or margin (??).
I wouldn't know where to start implementing that advice. All I need is a TabControl with the two lower tabs; they should have 3 sides with the upper being borderless, joining the upper region. Nothing else. No trembling, no shaking upon switching.
How would I go about that? Please be specific.
Does Microsoft provide XAML source code for standard controls?
TIA.
I am trying to write a XAML UI in WPF where the main window container (a panel) would host children.
The tricky part is I want the children to resize when the window resizes (e.g. when it's being maximized on a screen) and I want them to occupy the maximum of the available space without stretching.
But at the same time I would like them to be allowed to wrap like a wrap panel when possible.
I have designed a quick mockup for easier understanding.
Image mockup on Imgur (25.2KB)
The top one shows a panel hosting 3 elements which all share the same width and the same height. Two are on the first line, the third one takes advantage of the 2nd line to display.
If all were displayed on the first line, they would be of a smaller width.
The bottom one shows a panel hosting 8 elements which all share the same width and the same height (smaller than in the first mockup so they can fit in one screen). The first two lines have 3 elements each while the last line has only 2.
My initial idea was to use a Stackpanel but they strech your child elements and, as far as I know, they don't allow dynamic sizing of their children depending on the number of elements.
Then I had a look at the wrappanel which does the wrapping very nicely but requires you to set the children size in order to do its magic (I might have missed something but I couldn't find a way around it).
Do you have any idea how I could implement this behaviour while keeping my pannel flexible?
The application which is going to use it will have a different number of children to put in the panel depending on the user's settings.
Ah, I forgot to mention that there should obviously be no vertical scrolling, everything should fit on one screen like a dashboard. That's the point of this panel, make sure that everything fits but displays as big as possible, with no distortion.
If you have any question, just ask.
Thank you for your help.
I'm new to C# and I've been working on a small project to get the feel with Visual Studio 2008. I'm designing the GUI in C#, and I have a TabControl with three GroupBoxes. These three GroupBoxes are anchored to the left and right of the screen and work perfectly when resized horizontally.
I would like these three boxes to take up 33% of the height of the screen, and gracefully resize. I've tried messing around with anchoring, but I can't seem to find the answer. I've also been searching for something similar, but unfortunately, searching for positioning containers yields all CSS and HTML stuff.
This seems like a pretty common thing to do, but I can't seem to find an easy to way to do it. If someone could point me in the right direction, I'd greatly appreciate it.
Thanks!
Try out the TableLayoutPanel. I believe it does exactly what you want. It allows you to define columns and rows within its area, specifying their width (for columns) and height (for rows) in percentages or pixels. You can then drop a group box into each cell and set its Dock property to Fill, and it will nicely resize along with the cell when the TableLayoutPanel resizes (which can be easily achieved by using docking or anchoring).
This is really a shot in the dark but maybe you could try using split-panels ?
Edit: I've just checked in Visual Studio and I think the TableLayoutPanel might do what you want.
Edit2: dang, beaten to the punch :)
Handle the form's Resize event: Add code to compute the new size/position of the controls in there. Beware to interferences with the controls' Anchor property. You may have to Anchor to None and compute left and right position yourself as well.
Since you're learning, I guess you prefer not to receive a full solution but rather a direction. No code from me then ;-)