Winforms owner-drawn controls and resizing

Question

I am designing a control (below) called ViewPanel. Essentially it's just a panel that draws it's Text property as a title. To do this, I adjust the DisplayRectangle property to allow enough space at the top to draw some text.

The problem I am experiecing (and have been experiencing for a lot of owner-drawn controls that manipulate DisplayRectangle) is that when the control is resized, it's child controls seem to lag behind a bit.

Example:

Example control

As you can see here, I have a ViewPanel control, which has drawn a blue titlebar, also note that the ViewPanel is padded 16px in every direction!

The ViewPanel control has a single child (ListView)

I have resized the control - notice how the ViewPanel has drawn it's titlebar correctly, but the child has not repositioned itself accordingly.

Question:

What is responsible for updating the location of child controls? Do I need to override something?

Did you try setting the Anchor-property of the ListView to `Top,Left,Right,Bottom`? — KeyNone, Feb 06 '15 at 12:42
I would recommend to set the Margin instead of using DisplayRectangle. Setting the margin will automatically adjust its child controls. . .. — Rohit Prakash, Feb 06 '15 at 12:43
@RohitPrakash I need to think broader than just this particular issue, I have a couple of controls that rely on changing the display rectangle — Matthew Layton, Feb 06 '15 at 13:45

score -2 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 06 '15 at 14:49

Solved (for anyone else owner-drawing controls):

protected override void WndProc(ref Message m)
{
    const int WM_WINDOWPOSCHANGED = 0x0047;
    base.WndProc(ref m);
    if (m.Msg == WM_WINDOWPOSCHANGED)
    {
        //Make changes to your display rectangle here...
        this.PerformLayout();
    }
}

Winforms owner-drawn controls and resizing

1 Answers1