• Home
• Imprint/Impressum
• Localization Glossary
• Who we are

How I can precisely adjust controls layout for my form?

By default Sisulizer uses the “Snap to grid” feature for adjusting items moved in visual editor. This is very useful feature, because it gives you always identical position/size values instead similar values. Theoretically, you can get identical size values by disabling this feature and manually moving controls in editor, but this is a tough job. For example, you have three buttons in your form with 75 as “Width” value, and you want to change these values to 84 pixels. If you do it manually with disabled “Snap to grid” feature, you can get e.g. 84, 83 and 86 values, while with enabled feature you always get 84 “Width” value for all buttons. Default value for snap to grid feature is 8 px, but it can to be too large, especially if you need more precise values. However, you can change this default value for example to 6, 4 or completely disable this feature for selected projects:

• Go to “Tools” menu -> “Editors” -> “Form” -> “Form Editor Properties” dialog -> “Grid” tab
• Context menu of visual editor -> “Editor properties” menu item -> “Form Editor Properties” dialog -> “Grid” tab

Sisulizer is a flexible tool and gives you also other methods for fine-tuning position/size values of your controls.

1. Right click on selected control and select “Rows” item from context menu (from build 299, to build 298 this dialog was available via “Properties” item in context menu). Next, type desired values in appropriated translation fields. Properties with changed original values have bold names in “Property” column.

2. Check “Integer number” checkbox in Filter pane and type desired value to appropriated cell with size/position value.

Hints

1. If you can’t change position/size values, you should read this article on our blog.
2. If you check “Stretch controls automatically by text” option in “General” tab of “Form Editor Properties”, Sisulizer automatically grows the width and height of the controls such way that the whole text fits into the control.
   
   If your label (Delphi source) has “AutoSize” property set as “True”, Sisulizer automatically adjust control to translation text and you can’t disable it for this control by uncheck “Stretch controls automatically by text” option.
3. You can see values of all component’s properties  e.g. Width, Top, Caption, AutoSize, WordWrap etc. by right click on selected control and select “Properties” item from context menu. This feature was implemented to Sisulizer 2008 build 299.
   

Janusz

Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.