>Hi,
>
>I am wondering how others deal with the following situation. Here is how I do:
>
>I have a form where some customers need to see a row of controls (three labels and three textboxs). Other customer do not need to see or use them.
>I place these controls on the form and set the Visible of all to .T.
>At run time, when the form is initialized - based on some setting that calls for these controls not be be used - the code sets the property Visible of all controls to .F. Then, there is a LOOP through all controls and the TOP value is decreased by 26 (the space for these controls).
>This works. But I wonder how others would do it.
>
>TIA

Solution A
I put all the stuff into one container (transparent/ borderwidth 0 to make it invisible) and simply turn the containers visibility on / off

Solution B
I create a container class (the same thing) and add to the form on need.

The forms size must be changed, but rather then working in constants, I go relative to the lowest elements
For example, with container,

thisform.height = thisform.container.top+thisform.container.height+gap

For example, without container,

thisform.height = thisform.someobj.top+thisform.someobj.height+gap

and, for Solution B
<pre>
thisform.addobject(..
thisform.container.top = thisform.someobj.top+thisform.someobj.height+gap
thisform.height = thisform.container.top+thisform.container.height+gap
thisform.container.visible = .t.

gap might be in the form thisform.topmost_obj.top so the frame around the objs is even

I prefer to have such stuff on lower boundary - makes life more easy.

The other approach I use for some stuff where a lot if things turn on off looks like

lnTop = const
lnGap = const
if  .obj1.visible then
 .obj1.top = m.lnTop
 lnTop = m.lnTop + .obj1.height + m.lnGap
endif
if  .obj2.visible then
 .obj2.top = m.lnTop
 lnTop = m.lnTop + .obj2.height + m.lnGap
endif

You see one can iterate through this from an array, or, if in the right ZORDER, FOR EACH through it.