Is there a way to change how the borders on a floating pane appear, specifically, how to hide/make transparent. Also is there a way to make a floating form appear more like a regular window and not like a tool window (ie full size caption bar). Thanks
Christiaan
There are no properties to change the border style, but you can use a draw filter to hide the borders. If you have never used draw filters before, the following help article has a brief overview: http://help.infragistics.com/Help/NetAdvantage/NET/2008.1/CLR2.0/html/Win_Draw_Filter.html.
In your GetPhasesToFilter implementation, if the drawParams.Element is a FloatingWindowContainerUIElement, return BeforeDrawBorders. In your DrawElement implementation, return True to prevent the borders from drawing. This will only make the borders transparent though, the user will probably still be able to grab where the border was and resize the pane. Also, you will probably see the floating Form's control color show through where the borders were so you might want to go to the drawParams.Element.Control in your DrawElement implementation and set the BackColor to Transparent.
Setting the FormBorderStyle of the pane windows is not supported, but you can submit a feature request for this here: http://devcenter.infragistics.com/Protected/RequestFeature.aspx.
Thanks for the quick response, I went ahead and put in a feature request. I do have another question, is there any easy way to make a pane automatically resize to fill the window its being docked in?
Are you asking if the pane can fill the screen it is in? In that case no, you cannot maximize a floating pane. If not, I'm not sure what you are referring to. Can you post a screenshot or describe it in more detail?
Actually, I'm wondering if you can set up the main form (the one who holds the UltraDockManager component) so that there is only one dockable pane area. In other words everything works as normal except when docking into the main form there is only one dock pane as opposed to the left, right, top, and bottom. And... this one main form dock pane area covers the entire form. Hopefully this makes a little more sense.
You can set the LayoutStyle to FillContainer to make the last dock area fill the form or user control which hosts the dock manager. However, the dock area which is filled is technically still docked to the top, left, right, or bottom. So you cannot prevent docking on all sides. Also, panes can be dragged around within the dock area to make groups in the fill pane. I'm a little confused what this is supposed to accomlish. Do you want to allow users to drag the fill pane, or do you just want to do this for layout purposes? If you want to allow them to drag it, then they should only be allowed to dock the pane in the main area or float the pane?
Try setting the LayoutStyle to FillContainer to see if it accomplishes what you are looking for. It sounds similar to what you are describing. However, I'm still not one hundred percent sure what it is you are trying to accomplish. Also, I don't see how a dock pane filling the main form would offer any benefit to viewing across multiple monitors over an MDI application with our UltraTabbedMdiManager on the Form. That component would allow you to create separate tab groups for the mdi child forms with a splitter that can be used to resize each tab group.
I guess what I'm trying to accomplish is to replicate the way a single floating pane handles docking but in the main form. I still want to be able to dock on the all the sides but of one pane. I also want to be able to grab any one of the splitter bars and drag and not get stuck because its pushing against the opposite sides pane. As far as I can tell this is only possible if all the sub panes are docked in one parent pane. The reason for this, is that I'm using the dockable panes as my primary child windows (not as the usual support role). MDI is unfortunately not an option due to the distinct need for multiple simultaneous viewing across multiple monitors.