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Docking

  • 3 minutes to read

The ASPxDocking Suite contains three components: ASPxDockPanel, ASPxDockZone and ASPxDockManager. They allow you to manage content placeholders (dock panels) that users can move between specific areas (dock zones) within a web page. A dock panel can either be docked to a dock zone or made to float. Dock zones can be placed at any part of a page; their orientation and size are fully customizable. ASPxDockManager allows you to programmatically control all dock panels and dock zones within a page.

Docking

This topic lists the main features of the ASPxDocking Suite components.

#Panel Features

  • You can specify whether users can drag, resize, dock, or undock a panel.
  • Specify forbidden zones for a panel, which allow you to control the panel’s ability to selectively dock to specific zones.
  • Use themes to customize panel design with just a couple of mouse clicks.
  • Customizable header and footer content. Both elements allow you to display a glyph and text (or a hyperlink). Note that you can also use templates for more flexible header and footer content customization.
  • Customizable appearance for the header, footer and content sections.
  • Align control elements from right to left for locales that use right-to-left languages.

#Zone Features

  • Arrange panels within a zone control one after another, either vertically or horizontally.
  • A zone can automatically adjust its size to fit a docking panel. You can disable this feature.
  • Specify different appearances for the allowed and forbidden zone states.
  • Specify properties or assign a CSS class to change zone appearance.

#Manager Features

  • You can obtain collections of panels and zones within a page. To access a specific panel or zone, use the unique identifier (UID).
  • Fix the docking layout so that users cannot change a panel’s dock state or drag panels to a zone to rearrange them.
  • Save and restore a docking layout from a previously saved layout.
  • All panels on the page can be reset to the initial state (as specified in markup).

#AJAX Support

Use callbacks to load panel content on demand. You can specify whether panel content is always (initially) rendered inside a dock panel, or loaded in the following ways:

  • Immediately after the entire page is loaded
  • When a dock panel is invoked for the first time
  • Every time a panel is docked
  • When a panel is made floating
  • When a dock state is changed

#Client-Side Features

  • Client-side events allow you to respond to panel resizing, visibility state changes, dragging, and docking.
  • You can use client-side API to show, hide, dock, and undock panels, specify their position relative to other HTML elements, and change their content.