I have a DevExpress LayoutControl set inside a WinForms Form. I would like the LayoutControl to resize horizontally when the form is resized, or at least make the LayoutControl resizable by the user.
I have seen on DevExpress's page suggestions to change the SizeConstraintsType property to "default". I have also tried to anchor the control to the right and left of its parent. I have worked on increasing the MaxSize, also. Does anyone know how to do this?
I just basically want to do the equivalent to (in HTML) <table width=100%>. Does anyone know how to do this?
Thanks in advance!
The Developer's Express LayoutControl is a very nice tool, but has a couple gotchas.
The LayoutControl itself should resize just fine docked inside any container control like a form, a user control or a panel control. In many cases the layout control is one of the first things you put on your form/control because everything else goes inside it to be "layedout". So you should set the "Dock" property of the layout control to "Fill" or to the desired edge of the form/control you want it to dock to.
The "gotcha" here is that layout control's internal logic may limit its external dimensions or any internal item if it is capable of doing so and the layout items want to be a particular size. This is actually simpler than it sounds.
For example lets say you have a label control inside your layout control. A label control by default will size itself to fit the width of its text. In turn the layout control will try to accommodate the label's desired size by shrinking/growing the size of the layout item. So this one label control could be messing with your layout controls resizing. I chose label as the example because it is the most common control to mess up your layout design.
The way I fix this is to change the label's "AutoSizeMode" property to "vertical" (if you want text wrapping) or "none" (if you want to force it be the size the layout control wants it to be). This free up the layout control to make the width decisions.
Also if you are allowing the layout control to be resized by the end user (say with DevExpress' SplitterControl) the layout will again try to become its optimal size and not allow the SplitterControl to move away from this optimal size if the other controls are more easily resized (like a grid, tree, list, etc...). In this case adding an "EmptySpaceItem" to the layout control will allow it to fill any empty space when being resized. To add an EmptySpaceItem to your layout, right click the layout control in the Visual Studio designer and select "Customize Layout". The customize dialog will have a list of items you can drag onto the layout control including the EmptySpaceItem.
Related
I have a long form in a panel with lots of controls, however the Canvas/panel editor has a limited height of about 1000px and refuses to scroll to allow adding more controls.
I am able to make the panel 2000px and enable overflow to get the panel itself to scroll once the app is deployed, but how do I manage to drag/drop new controls/widgets?
TIA
At the bottom of the canvas is a round control which allows it to be extended beyond the default and therefore allows long controls.
A page's main panel should have a dimension property in the property editor, that specifies height and width. I'm able to set it to much larger values (e.g. 5000 pixels).
Once the main panel is large enough, you should be able to scroll down in it and drop new widgets where you need them to be.
It's also easy to accidentially drop in new panels and then stuff new widgets into the wrong panel, so make sure the panel structure is really what you believe it is (e.g. via the structure editor).
When I run my program it will display all content properly, and when I resizing the main window, the layout along with all associated widgets remain fixed, rather than resizing with the main window. I used to increase my all widget and listWidget respect to window computer resolution size but still this not one work properly.
I used this one code finding the system height and width.
QWidget widget;
widget.resize(widget.width(), widget.minimumHeight());
QRect rec = QApplication::desktop()->screenGeometry();
int h = rec.height();
int w = rec.width();
// Increasing the listwidget size
ui->listWidget->setFixedHeight(h);
ui->listWidget->setFixedWidth(w);
//increasing the button size
ui->pushButton->setFixedHeight(h0.2);
ui->pushButton->setFixedWidth(w0.2);
At this link you will find two screenshots that illustrate my problem.
Please resolve to solve my problem. Thanks very much in advance.
When defining the layout of your windows and forms in Qt Designer you have to define each element of your form in advance, in order to have a working layout.
This solution is based on the screenshots provided in the comments to the question. Follow these steps:
Add an empty widget to the central area of your form, if there is nothing there. It will be used as a placeholder for the controls you will add later, and of course you can replace it with whatever widget you want. But you need it there to define a proper layout.
In the property panel, set the horizontal QSizePolicy of this widget to MinimumExpanding.
Add an horizontal spacer to the left side of your progress bar.
Define a minimum/maximum width for the white widget on the left (I guess it's a text area). As an example set the maximum width to 200
pixels.
Make the same for the QTabWidget on the right.
Give a minimum height to the Groupbox on top.
Then give the grid layout to the MainWindow.
You should get something similar in the designer view (I use a dark theme, yours will have different colors of course):
If you complete all steps you should have a nicely resizing window.
For the future: remember to integrally define your layouts, also using placeholder widgets when needed, read carefully the documentation about the widgets size policies (there are several, you need to play with them to fully understand each one) and keep in mind that Qt uses a container based approach which is different, as an example from those used by the .Net framework that relies on the concept of anchors.
EDIT : to answer questions in the comments
You will need to add a layout to any widget that contains other widgets, e.g. adding controls to your groupbox will require to give it a grid, horizontal or vertical layout in order to scale nicely on resize. Again use spacers and size policies to make it look the way you want. If you need to add or remove controls, or change their positions, you may need to brake the layout, rearrange and then set it again.
You can also select groups of widgets and give them a layout e.g. vertical, than another group and set them horizontal and so on... then give a grid layout to the container widget to build a compound layout.
There are endless possibilities, you just need to practice and go through trial and error as for everything else...
You can also do it all programmatically, check the Qt widgets documentation for this. But for complex layouts I would not go that way: it's a lot of code... and you have to compile and run to test every modification.
Using the QtCreator, within the designer you can simply right-click on the parent-widget and add a Grid-Layout.
This one resizes it's children to it's dimensions.
When I maximize my window, I want to restrict a vertical layout (and the entire row below it also) so that it has a specific size (lets say a width of 200). How can I achieve this? Below is what I get now. The buttons are stretched too far. I want them to keep a width of 200.
To stop the buttons stretching, use the following steps in Qt Designer:
click on scrollArea in the Object Inspector
click on Break Layout on the toolbar
click on scrollArea in the Object Inspector
click on Lay Out in a Grid on the toolbar
click on scrollAreaWidgetContents in the Object Inspector
scroll down to the bottom of the Property Editor
change layoutColumnStretch to 0,1
These steps should remove an empty column from the scroll-area grid-layout, and make the second column stretch to take up the available space when the window is resized.
You just need to restrict the maximum width of all widgets (in this case the buttons) within the layouts of this grid column to the expected size, else they'll just keep expanding. You may also have to fiddle the horizontal size policy; I seem to remember that buttons were a bit tricky in this regard (or was that the height?), but can't test it right now.
The layout size contraint you tried only applies to the layout's direct parent widget, if it has one, which isn't the case for the vertical layouts here.
In qt, I have a form that contains among other things, a group with
A combo box
a checkbox
a spacer
a button
Based on some logic, I want sometimes to show another combo box... Where the spacer is, but smaller.
When I add it though, everything resizes automatically
I don't see a way to make it invisible, and yet keep items of the same size when I make it visible again.
I tried making it fixed size... But unless I use fixed sizes and positioning for everything, which I think is a bad idea, the items still move around when I change visibility.
It seems silly... But how can I make my little combo box show up instead of the spacer not next to it ? Spacers don't seem to have a name...
I would do
combo.setVisible(condition);
Spacer.setVisible(!condition);
Very easy... Except how do I access the spacer from code ?
My suggestion is to use a container QWidget instead of the spacer. Here is how it will look:
A combo box
a checkbox
a widget-container
a button
Widget-container is a QWidget with fixed size. Put your combo-box there and it will maintain it's size when you show/hide the combo-box.
Regarding your question (You will not need it but just to know in the future):
how do I access the spacer from code
You can create a spacer from code like this:
QSpacerItem* spacer = new QSpacerItem(0, 15, QSizePolicy::Fixed, QSizePolicy::Fixed);
layout->addItem(spacer);
...
Also you can get it from a layout if you know its index:
QLayoutItem* item = layout->itemAt(index);
But there is no such method as show/hide for layout items.
I have 3 subviews(UILabel, UIImageview, UIButton) to be laid out on a container view. All the subviews are laid out using visual format language (VFL). The subview have padding from the leading , top edges etc. The content of the subview are dynamic so their sizes changes all the time. i want to resize the superview(container view) to exactly fit all the subviews. Is this possible by auto layout? i have seen some of the link here which suggest intrinsic size which i am not able to understand. can someone suggest a better way to achieve this.
Yes, it's possible. If you plan to resize the superview according to subview content, then intrinsic content size is the way to go.
The ever excellent Ray Wenderlich site has a tutorial that covers this well. It's Beginning Auto Layout in iOS 6: Part 2/2:
Intrinsic Content Size
Before Auto Layout, you always had to tell buttons and other controls
how big they should be, either by setting their frame or bounds
properties or by resizing them in Interface Builder. But it turns out
that most controls are perfectly capable of determining how much space
they need, based on their content.
A label knows how wide and tall it is because it knows the length of
the text that has been set on it, as well as the font size for that
text. Likewise for a button, which might combine the text with a
background image and some padding for the rounded corners.
The same is true for segmented controls, progress bars, and most other
controls, although some may only have a predetermined height but an
unknown width.
This is known as the intrinsic content size, and it is an important
concept in Auto Layout. You have already seen it in action with the
buttons. Auto Layout asks your controls how big they need to be and
lays out the screen based on that information.
It is possible.
In my case, I wanted to give rounded corners to segmented control. For that, I embedded segmented control in UIView. Now I was required to resize that container view as per size of segmented control.
I gave only following constraint and everything was taken care itself.
(1) Chose container view and give it X and Y constraints.
Leading space to Super view.
Top space to Super view.
(2) Chose container view and give Leading | Trailing | Top | Bottom constraint.
Leading space to segmented control.
Top space to segmented control.
Trailing space to segmented control.
Bottom space to segmented control.
(3) Chose segmented control and give it Height and Width constraints.
Height : 30 // Whatever
Width : 250 // Whatever
Now if I change the height and width of my segmented control, it automatically adjust container view's size (super-view of segmented control).