How can I resize my vb6 program so that it automatically fits in any screen resolution?

Question

How can I have a vb6 program which opens correctly in 1280*1024 but when switched to other resolutions say 640*480 i can only see half of the screen. how to re-size my vb6 program so that it automatically fits in any screen resolution?

Answer 1

Usually a Form amenable to resizing has controls that lend themselves to a "flow" layout. Often this is something like a TextBox, grid control, etc. that supports scrollbars. You shrink/grow such controls as required after allocating positions for (i.e. moving) the fixed-size elements like buttons and such.

For a busy Form with lots of fixed size controls that isn't "document oriented" there is no set answer. Sometimes creating a scrollable Form makes sense but usually it doesn't.

Some people try to resize "fixed" elements, change fonts sizes, etc. This can produce results of mixed quality though, sometimes good and sometimes not.

Considerations about the Form size are best made up front as part of the design process. For some applications it might be better to decide on a minimum supported Form size. In other cases you may have to break things up with dialog Forms or tab controls.

Answer 2

There's no easy way to do this in VB6, like there is in .Net. You have to manually resize everything in the form's Resized event handler based on the new form's client size. It's a pain, and a huge mess, but it's the only way to do it.

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Correction: There's never only one way to do things, but I've been programming VB6 for several years, and usually just writing it into the Resize handler is straightforward enough, and I haven't found any good way to do it other than that.

Answer 3

You need to use the Screen object, this will always give you the current resolution in pixels:

Dim screenwidth,screenheight As Single

screenwidth = Screen.Width \ Screen.TwipsPerPixelX
screenheight = Screen.Height \ Screen.TwipsPerPixelY

Answer 4

Have you tried any 3rd party tools for doing this? Here's (a free) one that seems to work :-

ActiveResize Control Lite - I created a quick project to try it and it does what it says on the tin!

The lite version has some limitions such as number of forms in project, number of controls on form etc. You can also buy a Standard or Professional version if you need more functionality.

I know we've spent countless hours trying to implement our own resizing code only to remove it all and fix the location of most controls, move a few to make it look better and limit the min/max functionality of the form - none of which give a nice user experience. If we needed to do it again I probably use this control (or a similar one) just for the time savings.

Answer 5

I use ComponentOne SizerOne

The C1Elastic control allow from resizing and maintain the aspect ratio, resizing the inside controls on the setting you defined.

It's not free, but it payed itself with all the time I saved.