Allowing users to resize/move .NET UI controls at run-time

Posted by saquib on 29-Sep-2011 08:40

Standard Progress widget may be ticked as 'moveable' and 'resizeable' when setting their properties, thus allowing users to move/resize at run-time.

Is there anything similar for .NET controls, cannot see any property that I can turn on which will allow this. Had a play with 'Locked' but this appears only to relate to design time locking of the control.

Thanks!

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Posted by Admin on 29-Sep-2011 09:11

No, you either have to implement that based on rather low level Mouse events and track the movement yourself or implement your own "Visual Designer".

The latter is pretty cool if you wish to allow users to customize screen elements at runtime (you'll also get the snap lines etc.). But you may encounter license issues with some controls: Infragistics for instance disallows you to use their controls in the context of an IDesignerHost implementation (that's the roll your own Visual Designer) unless you have a developers license. MS Controls do not have that limitation to my knowledge. We have built a Form Designer for Savvion/OpenEdge BPM that way: Using MS Controls at design time, pretty much simplified that a normal user won't get overwhelmed by the opportunities and rendering it using Infragistics Controls at runtime.

This blog article has some links at the end of the attached presentations (including a book).

http://blog.consultingwerk.de/consultingwerkblog/2011/06/presentation-download-for-customizing-the-openedge-architect-visual-designer/

It's a lot of reading, but pretty interesting. Of course you might also hire a consultant that has already built this a couple of times

Posted by saquib on 29-Sep-2011 09:19

Thanks Mike, as always we can rely on you to point us in the right direction!

Will have a read and come back if we have any further queries.

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