Center buttons in a container

Question

How does one specify that a button centers itself in a container without having to specify a Location? Is it even possible?

The goal is to be able to center multiple buttons in a panel without having to perform calculations on their placement.

Answer 1

I know it is possible to center some controls on a form, not sure about a panel though. Anyway:

• Disable the Left and Right anchors of your control if you want your controls to stay centered horizontally, and the Top and Bottom anchors if you want your controls to stay centered vertically,
• In the designer window, select your control,
• In the VS 'Format' menu, hit 'Center in form', then 'Horizontally' and/or 'Vertically'.

If you want to center several controls side to side, select them all and execute the above steps.

Controls will then stay centered in the form when the user resizes the window.

Answer 2

I'm not 100% sure of what you are asking, but try using a TableLayoutPanel, and drop one button in each cell of the table. If you anchor the TableLayoutPanel to the Top, Left, Bottom& Right, the Table will grow and shrink with the form, but each button will "float" relative to the top-left corner of it's containing cell.

Disabling all anchoring will keep the TableLayoutPanel at it's relative location within your form, but your buttons will remain spaced out evenly amongst one another.

Between standard control anchoring and/or the the TableLayoutPanel you should be able to find the correct type of anchoring that you desire.