Automatic Form Layout and Management
Designed to increase productivity, the DevExpress Layout Control eliminates many of the tedious and time consuming operations associated with pixel-based form design, including manual control alignment. The Layout Control helps you bring products to market in the shortest possible time by reducing the amount of energy you spend on the design and manual customization of individual forms. Key features include the following:
- Automatic control resizing
- Horizontal and vertical item alignment
- Automatic control alignment
- Independent layout within groups
- Customizable size constraints for controls
- Customizable item caption position
Built-in End-User Customization
The Xtra Layout Control is both a developer productivity tool and an end-user customization tool. The extensive customization features of the Xtra Layout Control provide all the tools you will need to combat UI "bloat". It places power back into the hands of each individual user - in a manner that has never been available before in any programming environment. This is accomplished by allowing users to layout and manage their own UI - as their needs dictate - without seeking assistance from developers or being forced to use developer oriented tools.
Design-Time Experience
The Xtra Layout Control allows you to create elegant form layouts within seconds. Controls can be added to the layout in an intuitive manner, using drag-and-drop. Once the controls have been dropped, the Layout Control makes it easy to rearrange and resize them via easily rearrange and resize them using the mouse. Key features include:
- Dragging controls to and from the Xtra Layout Control
- Moving items within the Xtra Layout Control via drag-and-drop
- Combining items into groups and tabbed groups
- Hiding items and accessing them via the Customization Form
- Locking and unlocking an item's size
- On-Form access to individual layout items
Data Aware Layout
When you need to create a detail form with editors bound to fields in a data table, the DataLayout Control will eliminate the drudgery associated with traditional form layout. With this component, you don't have to place individual labels and editors onto the form and then carefully align them to one another. You do not have to bind each individual editor to data and provide proper label captions corresponding to field names. With the DataLayout Control, all this is done automatically. You simply bind the control to a data source and specify which fields are to be displayed. Initial layout generation is only a half of what the DataLayout Control has to offer. Form maintenance is made much easier as well. To add or delete a data-bound control, you simply click a check box. To change the editor or data-bound property used by default, select an appropriate value from a dropdown list.
Labels, Splitters, Separators and Empty Space Items
Labels allow you to display any static text and separators allow you to draw dividers between any layout objects. If you add a splitter to the layout, an end-user will be able to change the size of layout elements without activating Customization Mode. Although Empty Space Items don't display anything - they are 'empty cells' within the layout table - they allow you to solve numerous layout-aware tasks.
Expandable Groups and Tabbed Groups
If you wish to combine your editors and controls into titled panels or present them as tabbed pages, there is no need to combine them with external Panels or Tab Controls. You can easily do this with the help of built-in Layout Groups and Tabbed Groups. You can combine controls into groups, make them expandable and assign images to groups with just a few mouse clicks.
Layout Converter, Data Export and Printing
With a few mouse clicks, you can easily convert the contents of an existing form and begin using the Xtra Layout Control. All you’ll need is to place a LayoutConverter component on your form (or UserControl), and then use its commands to perform the conversion. The Xtra Layout Control gives you numerous data exchange options by providing WYSIWYG data printing along with data export to many popular file formats.
Appearance Customization and Themes
Like other DevExpress WinForms controls, the Xtra Layout Control allows you to modify appearance settings (background and foreground colors, font settings, etc) of its visual elements. Xtra Layout Control contains properties to customize the appearance of layout items, layout groups, tabbed groups and controls displayed within the layout control.
