ClientRectangle in VS 2005

[MBursill]

In WinForms 1.1 if you add a menu to a form and then grab the ClientRectangle property you get the Rectangle of the visible client area minus the menu. In WinForms 2.0 if you add a MenuStrip to a form and then grab the ClientRectangle property you get the Rectangle for the area including the Menu. Is there a replacement property to give me the same behaviour as the old WinForms? This should be simple but I'm just not finding it. Is it necessary to write code that iterates though each control on the form, checks the dock property and generates a new property (possibly called VisibleClientRectangle)? Thanks. -Mike.

[MBursill]

After doing some research (and using Reflector to poke around in the ClientRectangle property) I can see that there is no simple way to do what I want. I came up with a solution:

/// Return the client area of the form after subtracting docked controls
public new Rectangle ClientRectangle
{
get
{
Rectangle _clientRectangle = base.ClientRectangle;

    foreach (Control currentControl in Controls)
    {
        switch (currentControl.Dock)
        {
            case DockStyle.Top:
                \_clientRectangle.Height -= currentControl.Height;
                \_clientRectangle.Offset(0, currentControl.Height);
                break;

            case DockStyle.Bottom:
                \_clientRectangle.Height -= currentControl.Height;
                break;

            case DockStyle.Left:
                \_clientRectangle.Width -= currentControl.Width;
                \_clientRectangle.Offset(currentControl.Width, 0);
                break;

            case DockStyle.Right:
                \_clientRectangle.Width -= currentControl.Width;
                break;
        }
    }

    return \_clientRectangle;
}

}

However, iterating over every control in the forms Contols collection every time you want to grab ClientRectangle is slow. Anyone have any tips on optimizing this? -Mike.

[Insincere Dave]

I suppose you could add a panel, set its dock to fill and use its ClientRectangle. You would need to make sure the panel is infront of any other docked controls.