.NET GridLayout Project's Painfully Ugly Home Page |
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Direct Links: Project Page Downloads page |
Quick Desc: The .NET GridLayout project provides a very
simply programmed .NET-compliant library bringing Java's
concept of Layout Management to .NET, with emphasis on the
GridLayout.
Long winded desc: The GridLayout should be an easy thing to whip up in Windows.Forms land. I've seen a couple of attempts to bring Java's concept of Layout Management to .NET, and they are both pretty buggy and fairly complicated to fix. So what if you only wanted a GridLayout and you didn't mind not having completely resizable controls and controls that overlap when the form's too small? Sounds simple, eh? It is simple. Do note that this isn't a GridLayout as in ASP.NET, where GridLayout (in another embrace and CHANGE COMPLETELY) for MS means you can place controls on a grid with explicit x,y coords, even in an html page, just like you can in a Windows.Forms GUI RAD. No, that's not what we're doing at all. We're adding controls to your panel's Controls collection without any regard for spacing, and the GridLayout does the rest. Check the link, above. Instead of dragging to where you want it, we're letting the LayoutManager (look, a manager doing its job! give or take) do the formatting work. So with that, I introduce the example/sample code "GridLayout made easy in VB.NET". Smack this code into a form (or another control like a UserControl) and you're ready to go. Extend a form with only this code to have grid layouts all over the place. Turn appropriate vars into properties to feel better about yourself. Enjoy. March 23rd, 2004: Now the .NET GridLayout supports HTML Table-like colspans, allowing you to have a Control span more than one cell. This is, imo, a huge improvement over what you get in Java, and lessens the need to bother with a BorderLayout (which isn't supported yet in the project anyhow). Gotta question? Really? Email me here. |