Using the Grid Mode

Since its original release, the Elastic control has been the easiest, most powerful way to add dynamic layout capabilities to your Visual Basic forms without writing code. In the past, however, creating complex layouts required the use of nested Elastics, which made forms harder to design and slower to load.

The grid mode changes all that. You can now create layouts as complex as you like, with all resizing capabilities you want (including splitters and fixed areas), using a single Elastic control on the form. And, of course, you can still create these layouts without writing any code.

Think of the grid mode as a piece of graph paper. Each component will occupy one or more of the little boxes on the paper. This is similar to tables in word processors such as Microsoft Word™, where you can merge adjacent cells, and to Java's Grid Bag Layout, which works in a similar way.

The following sections will walk you through the creation of two forms, both based on the Elastic's new Grid mode.