Hi!
My Winforms app consists of a navigator window to the left, and a set of "content" windows to the right. All windows are dockable, and the UltraDockManager is set up with LayoutStyle=FillContainer to let the content windows fill up all available screen area upon loading.
But when the application loads initially there are no content windows, and the navigator window fills all available space (which looks rather weird). Instead I would like the navigator window to remain in its standard size, and the content area to the right just display a grey background color, or similar. (The requested behaviour is more or less similar to Visual Studio with navigation window being the Solution Explorer and the content window being the loaded files.)
Suggestions, anyone?
- Atle -
If you would like to accomplish a VS like interface, the best way would be to set IsMdiContainer on the Form to True. Use the UltraDockManager for the panes, and an UltraTabbedMdiManager for the documents in the center area. Each MDI child form will become a tab in the center. However, if you would like to continue to use the UltraDockManager with a layout style of FillContainer to manage all panes and documents, you can try to dock a gray panel to the center and set its Settings.ShowCaption to False so it will occupy the center area instead of the navigation window.
Thank you for your quick answer!
I prefer the latter option using the panel as an initial placeholder. But the problem with this is that the docked placeholder panel remains in the middle, new windows are docked to the side when opened (the content panes appear like new navigation panes instead of utilizing the same area as the panel).
Any ideas?