Question

I have multiple tabs that have different data inside. The first tab has ListView which basically fills the whole TabPage. It looks nice when it’s seens in small resolution and nice if it’s large resolution as it scales just fine. It just gives more place for data if there’s not enough of it to fill the whole space.

However I’m having problems with other Tabs which basically holds some GroupBoxes with some TextBoxes like on screen below.

The amount of data is always static, and this is where I have problems. It looks OK on small screens as the TextBoxes and GroupBoxes fill in nicely. But on larger monitors I don’t know what to do with it. Either I can make TextBoxes larger but seems extremely unpractical for some fields and having Street Name going from one side of Monitor to the other doesn’t seems like a logic choice at all. I can make Groupboxes to fill the space but still it’s an empty space and looks … well empty. Is this “normal” to left it like that, or what to do with such empty space? I can’t really move more stuff into it as on smaller screens it will be problematic. Is there anything one can do about design of this?

Answer 1

I’ll try to illustrate what I was talking in comments. From images I see you using DevExpress components, so did I and created simple example: 2 TextEdits(lets imagine that represents City entry) in LayoutControl. TextEdits.Properties.MaxLength is set to 30 – same as database table field size. First TextEdit has no limits of Width, second TextEdit.MaxSize.Width = 280

Now In first picture TextEdits looks fine, but in second picture first TextEdit is weird – it is long but you can enter just 30 symbols. And second TextEdit is pretty clear – it displays so many symbols as it should.

So I think there is no need to fill all empty space, but just create intuitive UI. And you can add more controls in that empty place later.