Question

I’m new to Windows Forms in Visual Studio, and I am wondering how to automaticly resize controls to the window size.

Say, I have 2 controls in a panel, a List Box and a Button. I want the button to dock to the bottom, and I want the List Box to fit the rest of the space. when the window resizes, the button should be at the bottom (as expected with docking), and the list box should stretch down to the button.

Is there a way to do this without any code?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Dock is pretty easy to use, but I recommend using the Anchor properties instead. Resize your form to a reasonable size in the Designer. Then, place your controls to look the way you want. Then, decide which controls should resize with the form and set the Anchor property as follows:

• If you want the control to resize with the form in width, set the Right anchor.
• If you want to resize height, set the Bottom anchor.
• If you want the control to stay right when the form resizes, unset the Left anchor.
• If you want the control to stay bottom when the form resizes, unset the Top anchor.

The problem I have with Docks is that they sometimes act funny when controls are not declared in a specific order, and to get the effect you want, sometimes you have to create extraneous panels just to hold controls.