2

I just designed a windows forms application but when it ran on my friends smaller laptop; the form appeared too big or should i say one had to scroll from left to right or top to down to access various text boxes, buttons etc. I was looking at this SO answer, which showed the following code: 

this.WindowState = FormWindowState.Maximized;

I presume this piece of code resides in the specific form constructor ? Would this code solve all my issues? I do not have a smaller laptop currently at my disposal for testing unless i start messing with my own screen resolution.

Community
  • 1
  • 1
David
  • 73
  • 1
  • 1
  • 11

3 Answers3

3

The code posted in the accepted anwser of that question needs to be put in form constructor, of course (InitializeComponents) and having a maximized form of course removes a lot of problems about sizing. Anyway, the property:

Screen.PrimaryScreen.WorkingArea

is very useful for form sizing and positioning relative to the current screen size. For example:

this.Width = Screen.PrimaryScreen.WorkingArea.Width / 2;
this.Height = Screen.PrimaryScreen.WorkingArea.Height / 2;
this.Top = (Screen.PrimaryScreen.WorkingArea.Top + Screen.PrimaryScreen.WorkingArea.Height) / 4;
this.Left = (Screen.PrimaryScreen.WorkingArea.Left + Screen.PrimaryScreen.WorkingArea.Width) / 4;
Tommaso Belluzzo
  • 23,232
  • 8
  • 74
  • 98
  • this doesn't address the resizability of the Form, just its size. Adding blank space to a form doesn't make it more resizable for example – Sten Petrov Jan 14 '13 at 17:15
1

Before setting the WindowState to Maximized you need your form to be fully resizable.

Shrink your form in VS designer as much as possible, set the Dock, Anchor and Min/Max sizes for each of its components, try to resize it in the designer. Repeat until it resizes well.

You may need to group controls together in Panels to control how they resize if the above iteration wasn't enough.

Sten Petrov
  • 10,943
  • 1
  • 41
  • 61
  • Nearly all my components are anchored top and left. When i tried to set the dock value; most components moved within the parent component?! – David Jan 14 '13 at 17:42
  • Anchoring everything Top+Left makes your controls static in size. Try anchoring your controls to the nearest corner and the ones that need to be resized can be anchored to opposing sides as well (Top+Left+Right for example). When there are a lot of child controls in your form Dock may be confusing to use – Sten Petrov Jan 14 '13 at 19:15
0

I personnaly use TableLayoutPanel and design my form by defining rows and columns, and setting their heights and widths, some with AutoSize some with Percent and some with Absolute size type according to how I want my form to be shaped. Then I put controls(textboxes, labels, comboboxes) inside of the cells of tablelayoutpanel and set their dock to Fill. That's it.

I'm not sure if it is the proper way to go for this job, but for 2 years I've been doing that with no failure. Hope it would help to you too.

Tolga Evcimen
  • 7,112
  • 11
  • 58
  • 91