problem with dock fill

problem with dock fill

• vchu

  if you get into that situation again, you can experiment around with right clicking on your controls in the designer and playing around with "send to back" and "bring to front". In reproducing what you saw, sending the checkbox to the back (or bringing the treeview to the front) would have made the docking work the way you expected it to.
  
  

• Scottzrn

  To do the equivalent manually in code, use the Controls.SetChildIndex() function. Docked components fill backwards from their expected behavior: the most recently added child component will be docked closest to the container's outer edge, with the "older", lower index docked components toward the center of the container.
  
  Therefore, to add a component on the "inside" of the container, with the older, docked component toward the outside, you need to add the newer component at the front of the Controls set, instead of at the end. Unfortunately, there is no Controls.Insert() function; only a Controls.Add().
  
  Therefore, to add a new panel and dock it fill with other panels already docked, do this:
  
  Controls.Add(panel);
  Controls.SetChildIndex(panel,0);
  panel.DockStyle=DockStyle.Fill.
  
  
  

• Mike Rorke - MSFT

  When I don't want do this in code, I don't have the possibility of playing around in the designer.
  Somehow it seems that in one of the applications I made, the order in which I put the controls in the form has great effect.
  
  On a form with a left panel, a splitter and a right (fill) panel, I have to add the fill first or it will capture the entire area (as described in the first post). I must add the splitter before the left panel, or otherwise it will end up on the left of the left panel.
  
  On the left form, there's a top panel, a bottom panel and a (fill) listview. I have to add the listview first, or it will, again, capture the whole client area of the parent panel. The other two don't influence each other's position, so I can add them in any order I want.
  
  This behaviour seems a bit picky though..
  
  

• B-M-C

  yes, you are correct, the order of controls makes all the difference in docking/anchoring. The designer changes that order via SendToBack and BringToFront. If you don't have the luxury of using the designer you'll need to do the equivalent manually in code.

  That said, our docs can probably use some brushing up on this point. I will be forwarding this thread to our doc writer.

  
  
  

• Andrew K Lee

  I still don't know if that was a bug or not, but I found a workaround. instead of having two panels and a splitter between them, I have one panel docked to the top with the same stuff inside it as mentioned before. Then I have a splitter also docked to the top. Then I have a label below that, also docked to top, but now it's not inside a panel. below that I have the tree docked to fill, and for some reason it works properly like this.
  
  

• Artie Sluka

  You can modify the order that the controls are added in the [form name].Designer.cs file without having to re-add your controls. Search in this file for the section that contains the code "this.Controls.Add". Eg:
  
  this.Controls.Add(this.dgResults);
  this.Controls.Add(this.tbrMain);
  this.Controls.Add(this.spltHorizontal);
  this.Controls.Add(this.txtOutput);
  
  
  
  
• problem with dock fill