ASP.NET – formatting bound fields

If you try something like this in a GridView or DetailsView you might end up frustrated:

<asp:BoundField DataField=”Percentage” DataFormatString=”{0:f2}%” HeaderText=” Percentage” ReadOnly=”True” SortExpression=”Percentage” />

That’s because no matter what you put in the DataFormatString property, the text is formatted the same way (although the literal characters from outside the brackets do appear, so DataFormatString it’s not completely ignored).

The solution:

<asp:BoundField DataField=”Percentage” DataFormatString=”{0:f2}%” HeaderText=” Percentage” ReadOnly=”True” SortExpression=”Percentage” HtmlEncode=”false” />

Don’t know why…

CenterParent for non-modal forms

As it turns out, if you want to show a non-modal form centered in the boundaries of its parent, in .NET 2.0, you’ll have to set its position manually.

Although the System.Windows.Forms.FormStartPosition.CenterParent works fine if you use form.ShowDialog(owner); (modal form), it doesn’t seem to make a difference when using form.Show (owner); for a non-modal form. I suspect a bug, because I didn’t find any mention of this behavior in help.

The solution:

form.StartPosition = FormStartPosition.Manual;

form.Location = new System.Drawing.Point(form.Owner.Location.X + (form.Owner.Width – form.Width) / 2, form.Owner.Location.Y + (form.Owner.Height – form.Height) / 2);