Qt Designer - How to get a widget to span columns?

Question

I created a simple form. I added a PushButton in the bottom right, and then a TabWidget above that. I highlighted the main window, and chose Grid Layout. The PushButton was stretched, so I added a spacer to the left of it.

Now, my Tab Widget only occupies the left most column. I want it to span into Column1 as well. I looked through every option and tried right-clicking anywhere, and can not get the designer to create the span.

Just to make sure I wasn't missing anything, I modified the .ui file directly, added colspan="2" to the tag for the Tab Widget, reloaded it with designer, and it is displaying perfectly. However, I want to use the designer as much as possible.

Any ideas how to get this to span?

Answer 1

Well... It's simple "drag operation". Just grab edge of your TabWidget closest to column you want span. And now just simply "stretch" TabWidget on empty column... It should now "span" on both columns

Answer 2

If you have problems stretching the TabWidget (there is a bug in at least 4.6.2-4.7.3) you can right click it, convert it to a QToolBox, stretch it, right click it again and convert it back to a QTabWidget.

I tried this with an empty QTabWidget and do not know what happens if you already added some child widgets to it.

Answer 3

I find it useful to edit *.ui file by hand in some cases! according to XML Schema provided here http://harmattan-dev.nokia.com/docs/library/html/qt4/designer-ui-file-format.html you can span multiple columns by editing tag, and adding "colspan" and "rowspan" attributes, forexample:

< item row="0" column="0" colspan="3"> ... < /item>