Setting
the
Size of screen in Blend
Setting the screen size is
sometimes a matter of concern, although in silverlight and WPF applications can
adapt automatically to different sizes according to the space available by use
of design fluids or auto layouts.changing the sizes frequently as per the demand
becomes quite cumbersome with fluid layouts but to overcome this problem
Expression Blend provides features of design time sizing which is a special way
of positioning at all the times depending on the nature of the project.
To get a clear view of sizing, let's look at an example. The image below shows two partitions in which one
partition is of a fixed size while the other partition has the ability to change
its size accordingly to occupy the space available.
Arrange two rectangles in the
grid.
Now lets fix the horizontal
size of 1st partition and set the size of second partition to auto then the 1st
partition maintains its width throughout the application while 2nd partition has
the ability to fill into the available space.
Here when the size of Grid is
changed only changes in the 2nd parttion are obvious while 1st parttion
maintains its width.
Here
resizing the grid control horizontally increses the width of 2nd parttion.
Here resizing the length of
the control changes the height of both the parttions , this is because only the
width of the 1st patition is fixed and not the height..
In order to implement this
functionality in expression we follow the following procedure :
Check out
the root element in your object tree.
For WPF
projects, your root element will be Window for a window or UserControl for a
custom user control:
This is
applicable to user controls you create as well:
For
Silverlight , root element will always be a User Control
Now select
a root element (Window, WPF User Control, or SL User Control) and look in the
Property panel at the Width and Height properties in the Layout category:
Click on
the Auto button next to the Width or Height property to set the application's
width, height, or both to Auto.
Note : While setting the size
to auto, height and width can not be altered but the maximum and minimum size
can be set by the
MinWidth, MinHeight, MaxWidth, and MaxHeight
properties.
Hence sizing the screen to
different height and width dynamically enhances the layout on the final output
screen without causing controls to run out of boundaries or keep large
unoccupied screen.