Newbie layout question please help

[SStory]

I am new to ASP.NET, but not to ASP or Visual Basic.
I have read much of ASP.NET unleashed first addition. It all looks neat,
but I don't understand several things.

One thing in particular is that I laid out all of my controls on a form that
took a long time to set up--lots of fields. I did this with grid layout on.
So this makes absolute positioning, which is cool, but..

* If the user changes the browser text size the text overruns other items
* There is no way it seems to use a validation summary control or add
includeheaders to the top because it won't move the page down.

Am I missing something?

Do most people use the grid layout or not?

If I should use flow layout instead, then do I need to use tables and such
or does the IDE make them for me?

Also if I should have used flow layout, then how do I convert my existing
form to flow layout so that it will move it down for things above like the
validationsummary, etc.?

Are usercontrols, etc only good if you are in flow mode?

Please give me a general overview of this and how I should go about it.

Thanks,

Shane

 

[Marina]

I dislike grid layout.

The biggest problem, is that if you have dynamicly sized controls (e.g a
grid), you can't know in advance how much space you may need for it. A grid
may have 3 rows or 30. How do you know where to put the controls that are
supposed to go underneath it?

Another thing is that IE has issues with properly interpreting absolute
positioning under certain conditions.

To get proper layout, you can use tables, or whatever elements you require
to create your page.

To convert what you have now, change the form to FlowLayous. You will have
to redrag all your controls, in order for them to lose all the absolute
positioning information. So just select a control, and drag it elsewhere on
the form - that should do it. Alternatively, you can switch to HTML view,
and delete everything in they 'style' attribute of each control that refers
to its position.

"SStory >" <[email protected] <remove the 'online.' to send me
mail> wrote in message news:[email protected]...

 

[Barry]

I only use flow layout. Grid layout can be a real bear to work with and
absolute positioning is very tricky and not supported in older browsers.
The resizing thing you've discovered is another pain.

To convert to flow layout, just change the pageLayout property. I've
found that you sometimes need to slightly move each control after you
make the change to get it to snap to the new layout.

You'll need tables to align everything, just like in plain old HTML.

HTH
Barry

 

[SStory]

Thanks--my problems exactly,
but you could you explain to me if I should use panels or placeholders and
exatly what those are and how they work....

I am still vague on it all.

Thanks for everything...

Shane

 

[SStory]

Then what do you do to account for the issues I described below or do you
just not care if the user changes browser text size to Larger and everything
overlaps???

Why would anyone ever use grid layout if there is no flexibility of
flow--like growing and shrinking.
You couldn't use the validation summary control in this fashion or an
include at the top right?
Or do most people use frames to get around the header include issue?

I was wondering do sites like gotnet.com use grid layout or flowlayout to do
the neat stuff they have there?

I am also unclear on Panel and Placeholder controls--when do I use them and
how are they affected by the grid layout--I imagine they wouldn't grow or
shrink correctly.

Thanks in Advance,

Shane

 

[Marina]

Both panels and placeholders aren't directly related to which type of layout
you want. They can be used in both for the same purpose.

Panels are basically used for grouping controls. That way if you want to
make a group of controls invisible, you can make the panel they are in
invisible, thus making everything inside it invisible. A Panel basically is
a 'div' tag once rendered in HTML.

A placeholder can be handy when you need to dynamically load controls into
specific locations.
For example, if you need to add a textbox at runtime, but you don't want to
add it to end of the Controls collection - but in a specific location in the
middle of the page. By adding it to the Controls collection of a
placeholder - you are basically just putting your textbox in the place
holder's place. The placeholder may have multiple controls in it.

But again, neitehr of these controls are directly related to the layout type
of the page.

"SStory >" <[email protected] <remove the 'online.' to send me
mail> wrote in message news:[email protected]...

 

[SStory]

Thanks Barry.

I am still wondering about Panel and Placeholder controls--do I just use
those in flow mode?

Also while I have someone to ask is there a simple way to reset tab order in
webforms--like there is in Win Forms?
I was having to go through one control after another--yuk.

Thanks in advance,

 

[SStory]

Thanks Marina,

But if I put a panel on a grid layout and then hide--won't it still take up
the same amout of space and the other controls still be in there place??
i.e--leave a big empty hole... Thus making flow layout necessary?

Shane

 

[SStory]

Marina,

I seem to have problems with a very long, form.. It is nicely formating
using the grid layout.
Putting it into table mode would be a lot of reworking

For example, it is setup more like an adobe acrobat form

has fields and above each field, what is in the field. At present it is
nicely aligned unless someone decided to make their browser text bigger than
medium.

I wanted to move it all down, but there seems to be no easy way to do that
in the IDE.
I don't know how to get nice positioning without abs. positioning, but don'
t know how to get it flowing right with it.
I think maybe some pages benifit from grid layout--forms for example, and
other's don't..

Still trying to catch on. I have tried panels. I tried to just copy from
the form and past into a panel , but no luck.

Thanks...

Looks like there would be a site dealing with such issues...instead of just
code issues.