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A unique 'Priority Relationships' architecture enables docking windows to exhibit 100% accurate previous dock/float state transitioning when double clicked.
Panels-Docked
Panels-Floated
Panels-Re-Docked on Double-Click
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The powerful 'Autohide' feature allows windows to be placed in hidden mode. Hidden windows can be brought into view by hovering the mouse cursor over autohide tabs.
Autohide Mode
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In Visual Studio, when you right-click the autohide tab, a pop-up window with a menu listing autohide windows will appear. On this menu you can select the desired window. State transitions can also be provided with double clicks.
Context Menu for Autohide Tabs
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The Caption Bar of the docking window can be customized using the Docking Manager. These appearance customizations can be applied to active and inactive captions.
Inactive Caption Bar-Customized
Active Caption Bar-Customized
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Docking windows can be created and hosted inside a ContainerControl, UserControl or MDIChild form type.
Docking Windows Designer Inside UserControl
Docking Layout Inside MDIchild Form
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The Docking Manager allows you to paint the caption with custom colors and brushes. This is achieved through the ProvideGraphicsItems event.
Caption painted with 'PathGradientBrush'
Caption painted with 'LinearGradientBrush'
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While using the Docking Manager, custom caption buttons can be included for docked controls in addition to the existing standard buttons such as Autohide button, Close, Maximize and Menu button. There is no limit to the number of custom caption buttons that can be included.
Custom Caption Buttons for Docked Controls
A click event is provided for the custom caption button to perform the operation for which it has been created.
Extended Custom Caption Button
Custom caption buttons can also be set to the individual docked controls allowing users to have different caption buttons for each docked window.
Different Custom Caption Buttons for each Docked Control
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The Docking Manager architecture allows you to drag-and-drop (DND) a docked control during design-time just as in run-time.
Design-time DND Helps Set Up Initial Dock Layout
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The docking architecture provides design-time support to float a window. Just click on the title bar and drag to get a floating window during design-time. The docked windows can also be made to float by double clicking the title bar.
Floating Window During Design Time
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The Docking architecture allows you to tab with more than two docked controls during design-time as well.
Tab Windows During Design-time
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A 'Dock Prediction Band' gives users the exact dock-location and size when a window is dragged to a potential dock target. Syncfusion docking supports three types of dock predictions:
Standard Dock Prediction
Visual Studio 2005 Style Dock Prediction
Whidbey Style Dock Predictioin
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The DockTabAlignment property in Docking Manager stores the DockTabAlignmentStyle enumerator values (such as, Top, Left, Right, Bottom) and changes the position according to the DockTabAlignmentStyle value.
Dock Tabs Vertically Aligned-Bottom(Default)
Dock Tabs Vertically-Aligned Top
Dock Tabs Aligned Left
Dock Tabs Aligned Right
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The Syncfusion Docking architecture provides the DockLabelAlignment property to align the docking window caption text.
Docking Window Caption-Align Left
Docking Window Caption-Align Right
Docking Window Caption-Align Center
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The Docking Manager has the capability to include a 'Maximize' button on the caption bar of the docking Window. By using this feature, the docking window can be maximized.
Docking Window Maximize Button
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Docking windows in MDI applications and MDIchild forms can be seamlessly transposed back and forth. Combining this with the TabbedMDI package and users can receive exact VS.NET like docking/MDIchild interchangeability.
Transition Between Docked State and MDIChild Window
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An Extender Provider in the architecture enables any Windows Forms Control derived class on the design form to be transformed into a Docking Window.
Extender Provider Designer Architecture
Extender Provider Designer Architecture
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Exclusive to Essential Tools docking architecture is the DockToFill mode that enables docking windows to stretch and occupy the form's full client region. Combining this with the DisallowFloating mode allows users to design a layout composed entirely of dockable windows that may be dragged and re-docked but cannot be floated off the host form.
'DockToFill' Mode-Illustrated
'DisallowFloating' Mode-Illustrated
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Full dockstate persistence capabilities with the option to return to a set default designer state. Persistence of intermediate dock states is also possible.
Persist State Property
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Syncfusion Docking architecture provides extended properties to specify an icon for each docked control. Docked Controls with icons are illustrated below:
Docked Control Icons
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Syncfusion Docking architecture supports linked managers. Generally, a form contains a Docking Manager and the docked controls are transferable within the form. With linked managers, we can transfer docked windows from one form to another, or any User Control which has a Docking Manager.
Docked Windows-Default Form
Docked Windows-Transferred from Parent to Child Form
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Dock windows within other docking windows or directly dock to the main form. Pick docking levels and priorities based on drag hit-areas.
Multiple Levels of Docking and Nesting
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Float windows as individual frames or dock them within other floating windows.
Nested Floating Windows
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Syncfusion Docking architecture provides a default context menu for all docked controls to perform basic docking operations.
Default Context Menu for Docked Controls
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Group windows as tabbed docking/floating groups. Tab groups may be formed simply by dragging a window to another docking window.
Tabbed Docking
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The Docking arrows of the docking windows can be shown or hidden for different locations using the Dockability property in the Docking Manager Package. This feature can be experienced at run-time by using the drag-and-drop functionality.
Tabbed Dockability
Outer Dockability set to Left, Right, Top and Bottom
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The docked controls can be frozen from being resized, using its freeze size feature. These size-frozen controls can be docked to other controls as well.
The docked controls can also be restricted from being resized at run-time by defining the control's minimum and maximum sizes.
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Super ToolTip with custom description, images, header and footer, can be displayed for a docked control's caption button.
Caption Button-Super ToolTip
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Docking Package supports a number of Visual styles starting from Default to the all new Office2007 style. Docking windows also feature a theme drawing mode for visual styles.
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The Powerful docking architecture allows users to add Visual Studio.NET style docking/floating windows to Windows Forms applications.
Visual Studio.NET Style Docking Windows
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The Docking Manager lets you customize the appearance of the drag cues with many different popular styles such as Whidbey, Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008.
Whidbey(Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2) Style
Visual Studio 2005 Style
Visual Studio 2008 Style
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Full fledged WYSIWYG(What You See Is What You Get)Windows Forms designer allows drag-and-drop configuration of docking windows layout.
WYSIWYG Designer Engine
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