listview tile layout problem (vb.net)

Question

I have a listview which displays (eventually) an album cover of an itunes play list with the album name under it. the problem I am having is that I cannot get the album art (currently a blank square) ABOVE the album name. It always is on the side... how do I do it? I've tried adding column headers and alsorts...

code to set up the listview

    Dim myImageList As ImageList

    albumList.View = View.Tile
    albumList.TileSize = New Size(120, 150)

    ' Initialize the item icons. 
    myImageList = New ImageList()

    myImageList.Images.Add(Image.FromFile("c:/test.jpg"))
    myImageList.ImageSize = New Size(80, 80)
    albumList.LargeImageList = myImageList

I then do a loop to display each album name which uses

        Dim item0 As New ListViewItem(New String() _
                {Albums(i).Name}, 0)

        albumList.Items.Add(item0)

the output is http://i111.photobucket.com/albums/n122/mfacer/Screenshot2010-05-02at164815.png

but as i said, I want the album name under the orange box....

any ideas?? Thanks for any info!

Answer 1

That is the baked-in arrangement for tile view. If you want the labels underneath the images then you have to set View = LargeIcon. If that produces an undesirable spacing of images then you can P/Invoke SendMessage() to send the LVM_SETICONSPACING message. This worked well:

using System;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

class TileView : ListView {
  public TileView() {
    mSpacing = new Size(48, 48);
  }
  private Size mSpacing;
  public Size IconSpacing {
    get { return mSpacing; }
    set {
      mSpacing = value;
      updateSpacing();
    }
  }
  protected override void OnHandleCreated(EventArgs e) {
    base.OnHandleCreated(e);
    updateSpacing();
  }
  private void updateSpacing() {
    if (this.IsHandleCreated) {
      SendMessage(this.Handle, 0x1000 + 53, IntPtr.Zero, (IntPtr)((mSpacing.Height << 16) | mSpacing.Width));
    }
  }
  [DllImport("user32.dll")]
  private static extern IntPtr SendMessage(IntPtr hWnd, int msg, IntPtr wp, IntPtr lp);
}

Change the new IconSpacing property in the designer to work well with the size of the images in your ImageList. You'll see the effect immediately.

---

Public Class TileView
  Inherits ListView

  Public Sub New()
    mSpacing = New Size(48, 48)
  End Sub

  Private mSpacing As Size

  Public Property IconSpacing As Size
    Get
      Return mSpacing
    End Get
    Set(ByVal value As Size)
      mSpacing = value
      updateSpacing()
    End Set
  End Property

  Protected Overrides Sub OnHandleCreated(ByVal e As System.EventArgs)
    MyBase.OnHandleCreated(e)
    updateSpacing()
  End Sub

  Private Sub updateSpacing()
    If Me.IsHandleCreated Then
      SendMessageW(Me.Handle, &H1000 + 53, IntPtr.Zero, CType((mSpacing.Height << 16) Or mSpacing.Width, IntPtr))
    End If
  End Sub

  Private Declare Function SendMessageW Lib "user32.dll" (ByVal hWnd As IntPtr, ByVal msg As Integer, ByVal wp As IntPtr, ByVal lp As IntPtr) As IntPtr
End Class