TStatusBar with bottom aligned panel

Question

I have a form with a TStatusBar, and bottom aligned TPanel, a bottom aligned TSplitter and client aligned TPanel, as shown in the following screenshot:

(The splitter is coloured red to make it a little more obvious)

Button1 simply increases the height of Panel1 by 20:

Panel1.Height := Panel1.Height + 20;

But when clicked the order of the controls changes, with Panel1 being blow the status bar and the splitter is now resizing the status bar.

This only happens when the height of Panel1 is increased by more than the height of StatusBar1 (19).

I assume this is caused by having two bottom aligned controls, but I'm at a loss as to the exact cause of the problem and how to work around it.

I'm currently using XE2, but I have the same issue with D2010.

In this situation is there a way to set the height of Panel1 to an arbitrary value, while ensuring that the controls maintain their expected positions?

Answer 1

Work around the problem by setting the Top property for the controls after changing the panel height.

StatusBar1.Top := Panel1.Top + Panel1.Height;