I've a strange problem regarding auto sizing of a panel in a user control. This panel is anchored to all 4 sides of the user control.
But the anchoring not always works as it should:
If the user control is resized by resizing the form, the right and bottom anchors don't work. But if the control is resized by using a splitter which is in the form, it works correctly.
All other controls which are also affected by resizing work correctly, just this panel won't do.
I can't see the difference between resizing through a splitter and through a form.
Setting the size manually in the OnResize of the UserControl only works if the resizing is done by moving the splitter. If the resizing occurs by resizing the form, the heigth and the width of the panel won't change to the new values.
Edit: To make it more clear: The user control is added to a TabPage and set to Dock=DockType.Fill.
Edit2: To make it more complicated: This is the hierarchy the control is used:
The Form contains a splitter with 2 controls (A and B). (B) contains a user control (C) with a splitContainer. The split container->panel1 in (C) contains a tabcontrol (D). This tabcontrol (D) contains a user control (E) (in a tabpage) . This user control (E) has a splitcontainer (F) in which another usercontrol with a tabControl (G) is placed. This tabcontrol (G) has tabpages, and in this pages is the described user control (H) placed.
If I place the control (H) directly to the panel in the splitcontainer (C) everything works fine. Since all controls which are added to a splitcontainer or a tabpage are set to docktype=fill, I cannot see why the last control has this problems.
Is there any limitation in the Windows Forms framework which limits the amount of child controls?
Edit: I have uploaded a TestApplication with which you can reproduce this issue.
http://rapidshare.de/files/49092516/TestApplication.zip.html
It occurs only under Vista. Win XP and 7 work properly...
If you resize the form, the textBox with the "..." button won't resize, but if you resize via the vertical splitContainer, it works.
There is a bug with deep nesting where the kernel runs out of stack space causing resizing, docking and anchoring to fail silently.
See https://web.archive.org/web/20140818095718/http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953934
You have talked about both "anchor" and "dock", which can serve similar purposes but act differently. Your problem may be that you are trying to do both, and this is interfering with the behavior you want. If not, perhaps try switching from the one to the other.
It sounds like you've double checked the ansectery of the control, but did you examine it with: View->Other Windows->Document Outline (a very handy tool I only recently discovered)?
Finally, while it doesn't directly solve your problem, it sounds like you have a very complicated UI, and your users may benefit if you were to spend some time to consider if you could simplify the UI. Of course, I don't know your users or the purpose of the app, and what you have may be the best, but it sounds like it might be time to ask this question.
Good luck.
The problem is not the depth of nesting; controls can be nested arbitrarily deep. Anchoring and Docking generally do not play nicely with each other. I usually favor docking over anchoring, but, whichever solution you choose, you should probably avoid mixing them.
Related
I'm having a lot of difficulty with WinForms and sizing of user controls. We've got a DataGrid, with some buttons underneath it, in a custom User Control.
Everything is anchored correctly. As in, when you resize the control, the buttons stay anchored to their proper sides, and the data grid fills the rest.
It even works when adding it to our main form:
Then, when we run the app, it gets cut off:
I've tried:
Docking
Anchoring
Changing the AutoSize property of the control, and the control as used in the main form
But nothing is getting it to act like it does in the designer.
Any help is really appreciated.
Use Split Container and put dataGridView on top and bottom insert your buttons and set Panel that is in bottom Fixed.
Another option is to use TableLayoutPanel
More information :
Designing the Layout of Windows Forms using a TableLayoutPanel, with auto-expand panels
There were obvious issues with the WinForms app, WRT scaling and fonts. We switched over to WPF and everything is working as expected.
I'm populating a self-made Windows Explorer which simulate the Microsoft Windows Explorer. This is the layout of my Windows Form:
What I want it to be is:
But when I maximized the windows, it looks like this:
The problem is that the treeView's width got increased, too. How to stop that ?
Any ideas? I've tried many ways but nothing works.
Try to add a second splitcontainer around the groupbox and the splitcontainer you already have. Then set the panel at the bottom as the fixed panel.
You can set the SplitContainer.FixedPanel property to disable automatic resizing of one of the panels. This way the specified panel will remain the same width/height even when the container itself is resized.
You could use Anchoring (each control will have that in the Properties menu), and select what you want it "anchored" to. That should allow your controls to stetch to fit the form.
It can be fiddly, so you have to anchor each control and think about how to wish to set it. EG to make a control extend if you increase the height of your form, click the top and bottom anchors.
So I am working on a program that has several screens which causes it to have overlapping controls (Buttons and lists).
I put the controls in panels which works great and then do show/hide for the panels.
This also works well.
I am having a problem now that I am up to several panels where when I move one panel up it gets absorbed by another and I need them to stay separate.
Example: When I move panel2 into place over panel1, panel2 becomes part of panel1. Then when I do panel1.Hide() and panel2.Show(), panel2 is still hidden because it is part of panel1. is there a way for me to ungroup these or move panel2 into place without it automatically becoming part of panel1? (I know I can show hide the controls inside of the panels, but this will add a lot of complexity because I have a ton of controls)
Perhaps there is a better solution than using panels?
You can use the View + Other Windows + Document Outline tool window to get these panels separated again. Drag the inner panel back to the parent. You'll then also have to edit the Location property to get it back in the right position.
This is annoying of course and good odds that you'll have to do this repeatedly. There's a better way to go about it, a TabControl has good design-time support and also has the same "overlapping panel" metaphor. You just need to hide the tabs at runtime. That's pretty easy to do, check the StackPanel control in this answer.
I'm experiencing difficulty with a custom-made User Control, and my searching on Stack Overflow, MSDN, and Google didn't pop up any troubles quite like the one I'm experiencing.
I have a very simple User Control: It's a label, a text box, and a button, with a SaveFileDialog and a FolderSelectDialog available. The text box and button are anchored Left,Right and Right respectively, with the intent that if the control is resized larger, the text box will enlarge to fill the gap, and the button will stay on the right edge of the control.
The problem I am encountering is that when the control is enlarged, the area to the right of the default width of the control becomes blank space when the project is built and run. The pictures here will illustrate what I mean:
In editor:
Running:
The control is smallish in its design window, but when I add it to a form and widen it, it behaves as intended. However, when I run the form the control was added to, half the control isn't visible.
I suspect that I'm overlooking something fairly straightforward, but I wasn't able to find anything addressing this point in my search. Help would be much appreciated.
My guess is that there is a panel or something that is added to your control and will be brought to front somehow runtime.
from property window's top there's a combo from which you can select all the controls in your User Control.
check if all the controls are what you want.
if you find that panel or anything delete it :)
EDIT:
alright this was not your problem.
now I can only assume that you have set some manual sizes to your user control, i.e. in its constructor. in that case designer will show the correct size of you user control,
now some other place in your code, you have set the user controls size manually again. if the layout is suspended and size changes, I think that the anchored controls' size will not change automatically.
if this is your problem, it is probably hard to find.
typically in java if you have a layout manager of somesort, when you resize the page then the components in that panel will resize accordingly. I think my app is missing some sort of layout manager to control resizing as at the moment everything is just static
Is there a way to make it resize on the changing of the form size? say the user makes the page bigger, then the componenets adjust and so on.
Thanks
.NET has layout managers as well.
Personally, I prefer the TableLayoutPanel for my WinForms apps.
Once you layout the Table (using a combination of static/dynamic sized rows/columns) you add your child controls to the table cells. Once you add your controls, you can dock or anchor the controls to the cell so that they are automatically adjusted when the window is re-sized.
Two main options:
Anchoring. Set your control to "anchor" to the sides of your form. This means that if the form resizes, the control will stay a constant distance from that side. So, if you anchor Top, Left and Right, then your control will stay in the same position, but resize horizontally with the width of the form. Play with it. It'll be obvious.
Docking. Set your control to "dock" to a side of the form, or the center. This is usually done with containers, and it will make the widget take up that entire portion of the form no matter how large it gets.
In Windows Forms you make use of the Control.Anchor property, which will cause the control to adjust accordingly when the window resizes.
To do this with windows forms you use the Anchor and Dock properties of the control
See this for a guide on how to use them