UI Autolayout

The cxsource framework provides automatic layout facilities, allowing user interface layouts to be built with runtime-evaluated rules rather than hardcoded values. This offers a number of immediate benefits:

• The underlying fonts and control appearances can be swapped out, leading to changes in the user interface layout requirements, without having to manually update every single UI.
  • This is especially useful when developing cross-platform interface layouts where the native appearance and even font rendering may require subtle changes to the layout.
• Localised versions of the UI can reflow correctly without running out of space and without leaving ugly gaps.
• A lot of manual coding, or manual calculations, can be skipped in favor of automated placement.
• Layouts can adjust as windows are resized, including controlled collapse of elements when the window is too small to fit the full user interface.
• Layouts can be hot-reloaded during development.
• Window sizes and size limitations are calculated automatically, and can automatically adapt as the UI changes.
• Layouts can be animated easily.

There are also some downsides:

• Calculating the layout at runtime is slower than simply loading some predefined values.
• Debugging problems in the user interface layout is sometimes more time-consuming.