Windows Forms 2.0 Programming

4. Layout In Chapter 2: Forms and Chapter 3: Dialogs, we explored the lion's share of form- and dialog-related issues, which are all ably supported by the Form class. But forms have another important, obvious role: They are canvases on which...

Fixed Layout The fundamental elements of the layout system assist control positioning, sizing, and ordering to establish a basic composition. One of the key requirements, therefore, is to ensure that the basic composition is retained, something th...

Dynamic Layout After controls are positioned, sized, and z-ordered the way you like, you might think that's all you need to do. That is, until a user resizes your form. For example, suppose users want to enter a long string into a text box. They m...

Layout Controls So far, we've covered the basic building blocks of the Windows Forms layout system. In general, you can bring them together in any number of ways to simplify your layout experience. As powerful as they are, though, they don't cater...

Layout Optimization For any form with a nontrivial number of controls, the layout and corresponding initialization code generated by the Windows Forms Designer into InitializeComponent can become quite involved, and can have a detrimental effect...

Custom Layout Yes, even with all the layout support that exists in VS05, the Windows Forms Designer, and the .NET Framework, you may still encounter situations that are complex enough to make it difficult or impossible to use it. It's at times lik...

Where Are We? As you've seen, Windows Forms and VS05 offer an abundance of layout support for forms and controls. This support starts when controls are added to parent forms or parent controls, whether by designer-generated code in InitializeCompo...