I want to use a Panel to minimize and maximize a group of controls, so that I can hide it. I have a form that is kind of long, and this was the way that I thought would be the best to maximize space. Does anybody know of any controls for this, has anybody done it, or does anybody have any advice?

I was going to use panels and shrink/grow them based on the minimize/maximize operations.

Brian

__________________
Brian

What is your target application?

(Come on Brian, you should know better than to leave out the details. ;))

Hey,

I must be slipping, that's a Friday for you.

We have a paper form system, which we are taking online (intranet). I want to create a VB.NET backend to process these forms; however, the form is very long, and I don't want to have to scroll up and down the form that much, when there are fields that the reviewer probably won't want to see anyway.

I came up with the idea of putting a group of controls into a panel, then hiding them or displaying them when a minimize or maximize button was clicked.

So in the client/server arena, any ideas?

Brian

[u]Good</u>
Server: Use a regular server control button that changes the Visible prop of the asp:panel.

[u]Better</u>
Client: asp:panel will render as a DIV in I.E. Create a client button/link that calls a JS function. Pass the panel's .ClientID to the JS function so the function can retrieve it with document.getElementById("id"). Then check the panel's ".style.display" attribute for "none" and change it to "inline". Else, set to "none". This will change the panel to showing or not and when not, everything after it will slide up. If you want more detail, just ask.

Hey,

Sorry, I meant the maximize/minimize in the Windows Forms world. I can't seem to get my requirements straight today.

Sorry about that,

Brian

what about setting width,height in percentage so minimizing maximizing will depend on page size

Ahmed Ali
Software Developer

I have done something similar using menu items.

How are you going to "minimize" and "maximize" the panels? Are you going to have a group of buttons that control this, menu items, or a different method?

I think what you want is not really maximizing and minimizing. You would be setting the "visible" property to true or false for whichever panel you wanted to show or hide.

You will also have to move up/down whichever panels are below the one you just hid/showed and subtract or add the height of that panel from the forms height. You should be able to write a single function or sub that does this and then implement it for each panel.

I could've sworn that there was a property of the panel or combination of properties in vb that automatically does this for you, but I can't remember what it is.

J

Hey,

I haven't worked on the process yet, so I'm all open how the minimize/maximize works.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Brian