Thanks for providing links.
I just know this is one of Billy's big topics and I know I've seen an
article over there so I was wingin' it ! <g>

julie

-----Original Message-----
From: Unmoderated discussion of advanced .NET topics.
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ian Griffiths
Sent: Wednesday, September 01, 2004 2:28 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [ADVANCED-DOTNET] is there a support for resizing in Visual
Studio ?

Ranjan wrote:
> Anchor and Dock setting for each control (around 30 per form on an
> average) on each form(around 150 ) doesn't seem to be the likely
> answer. Any solution?

It works well enough. What's the problem with it?

If it's the volume of work required in a solution with 150 forms and 30
controls per form, then I'd suggest that the problem isn't so much the
anchor and dock properties, as the fact that you have 150 forms with 30
controls per form...

If you're already committed to the (rather vast) effort involved in
designing 150 forms with 30 controls on each, then unless you want to
automate the layout *completely* you've got a lot of work on your hands
whether you choose to use anchoring and docking or not. Setting the anchor
property appropriate for each control is going to be a relatively small
proportion of the total work involved.

Anchor and dock aren't about completely automatic layout. They're about
enabling automatic resizing in what is otherwise an essentially fixed,
manually-built layout.

So the question is, is that how you're creating these 150 forms? Are you
going to design 150 forms by hand?  Or were you hoping to create them all
programmatically?  If you're creating the forms programmatically rather than
manually, you can just set the anchor or dock properties programmatically
too can't you?

And I'd second Ivan's remark that relying entirely on automatic layout tends
to result in pretty shabby-looking user interfaces. Java doesn't exactly
have a reputation for producing slick-looking UIs, and its approach to
layout is one of the contributing factors.


But if you really want to go down the Java route (letting a layout manager
mess up your design for you automatically) then you could take a look at
this:

 http://windowsforms.net/articles/customlayoutengines.aspx

This provides sample code that provides some of the automatic layout
features you might be used to from Java.

(I'm not sure if this was the article Julia had in mind. I thought this one
was originally written by Chris Anderson of Avalon fame rather than Billy
Hollis, but I could be wrong.)


--
Ian Griffiths - DevelopMentor
http://www.interact-sw.co.uk/iangblog/

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