Resizing Logic

Although 1024 x 768 is still a very common screen size, many computers have significantly larger screens. The forms should be designed to take advantage of extra space made available. Therefore follow these simple rules of thumb.

In addition consider the following points:

• Text-only fields (regular text, multi line, rich text) can be resizable. Numeric and/or date fields should never be resizable.
• Buttons that are placed alongside the right edge of a form or dialog should be anchored top, right. That way they will follow the edge as the form is made larger.
• If you have several fields in a row, then only resize (anchor top, left, right) the last field. And even then you should only do this if the field is contains a potentially long text. Typical such fields are description, notes, remarks and similar.

Below is an example of good resize behavior on a simple form window

Original size (above) and after resize (below)

Dialog boxes should typically not be used to show vast amounts of information and should therefore generally not be resizable. However, exceptions are allowed if well motivated by the use case. When making the dialog resizable, remember to anchor all buttons to the edge of the dialog so that they move correctly when the dialog is resized.