Spreading controls to fill space as a dialog resizes

Question

Hello,

I have a dialog with column down the right side filled with buttons. The dialog is built with Windows Forms. I have a mockup at the following link:original dialog (I would have included it but apparently i'm not allowed to use image tags)

I would like for the buttons in the right column to resize themselves to fill the remaining vertical space when the dialog resizes. It doesn't particularly matter to me whether or not buttons simply increase in size or whether the buttons remain the same size while the gaps between them increase. I'm simply want the buttons to go from the top to the bottom. (I have a mockup for this as well but apparenlty i can only include one link)

I've tried hosting the buttons in a FlowLayoutPanel but they do not increase as the dialog stretches, I only get whitespace at the bottom after I run out of buttons. I also tried a TableLayoutPanel and had the same result but I may have misused it. Does anyone have any ideas how I could accomplish this?

Thanks in advance, Jeremy

Answer 1

To get you started. Use the TableLayoutPanel, set its Anchor property to top, bottom, left, and right. Set the rows and columns to percentages as needed. I suggest each control have it own cell. Note that each control in a "cell" can have its Dock and Anchor property set as needed.

Answer 2

You can do this with a TableLayoutPanel. Create a column for the buttons, with each button having it's own row / cell in the column. Set each row to be an even percentage for height (if there are 10 buttons, each row would be 10%), and dock the TableLayoutPanel to the right side of the screen. Then, put the buttons into their rows and set them to full docking. Then, when the dialog expands, the TableLayoutPanel will expand to fill the entire right side of the screen, each row will adjust proportionally, and each button would expand to fit the new row size.

You may have to adjust this a bit to fit your needs, especially in how it relates to the other content in the window.