Question

I am writing a windows forms application that has a lot of textboxes. I want to add a label or a caption to the textbox, so that I don’t have to drag a lot labels onto the form and deal with positioning etc. So far I have found 2 possible ways to do this.

1. Create a user control with the label and textbox. How do I get the
   control, label and textbox to size appropriately depending on the
   text entered since the control will be reusable and different text sizes will be entered. How to get all the
   properties and events of the textbox to remain the same.

2. Extend a normal textbox and add a string property called label or
   caption, and show this property at the left of the textbox. I know
   this can be done in Web.UI with CSS but is it possible in a winform
   and how?

Any suggestions on how to do either of these?
Thanks.

Answer 1

You can create a UserControl that contains a label and a textbox. When you add the user control to your form, both the label and the textbox within will be added simultaneously. You can expose properties of the label and textbox to assign values at design or run time.

Using this method, you can add multiples of the user control to standardize the layout. As far as resizing the controls based on the text, you’ll have to subscribe to events and change the sizing manually.

For example, you can subscribe to the TextChanged event of the label and the textbox. When the event fires, you calculate the size of the string and then adjust the width and position of the controls accordingly.