I am making an interface where on the left is a column of menu buttons.
A couple of the buttons bring different graphs (each on it's own panel) to the front to view, using the BringToFront() method. I also have a "Save image" button where you can save the graph.
How do I setup the button to save whichever panel is in the front? Is it better practice to use "Enable/Disable" instead of BringToFront and then save whichever panel is enabled?
Previously, I had all these panels within a TabControl, and I had the button save the graph on whichever tab was selected, but I got rid of the tabs because I did not like the way it looked.
Thanks in advance.
The most easiest way is to store the actual active image in a variable, changing it's value by clicking the buttons. If you store the image itself or just the index or whatever to determine which image is actually infront is on your choice.
Another aproach could be, show and hide your panels, then you can iterate over your panel list and check which panel is not hidden.
Related
I have a chart with multiple chart areas and I want to have a listview where the user checks different signals, that are being plotted in the areas.
Since I want some signals to be displayed in more than one chart areas, I need the listview to reset every time the user selects a different chart Area.
To achieve this I think it is a good idea to create a new listview every time the user selects another chart area and bring the new to front.
My question is , how can I create multiple listviews at the exact same location, and also if someone has a better idea to this.
As you know, you can define the listview in code and do all the styling by hand or you can create a customControl for that.
But then, when the load event of your main form is fired, you create all the listview/customListViewObjects that you need and place them in the same location with the same size by setting their Location and Size property. Finally, you can use BrintToFront() on the required listview when an area is selected.
There are some other ways, but they aren't beautiful in winforms.
A) you can create a tab control with N tabs, then place a listview in each tab and set the tabControl style to the tab header/title is not shown. But as far as I remember, the tabControl will add a border frame that your cannot get rid of.
B) If you don't have many areas and its number is not going to change, you can create the listviews manually in your form editor, and place them wherever in your form (with the appropriate parent, of course). Then in your load event, you can set their location and size properties to the one you need. This is kind of ugly and you may see the controls moving when the form is loaded if you are not careful.
On the other hand, you can just have one listview and then, when the area is clicked you can reload all its child controls for the different signals.
In my code I have some pictureboxes that are clicked onto a panel by the user. Wherever the user clicks a picture box is placed. The location is stored in a database so that it can be called back later.
When a user clicks a picturebox it changes the backcolor property to red to give the impression of it being highlighted.
My issue is I want to add a groupbox (or another method of surrounding) around the highlighted boxes. So a user clicks say 4 picture boxes and clicks "Surround" button and it draws a groupbox around those 4 pb's. But I am at a loss since I don't know how to get the location of the outer pictureboxes (the ones that the group needs to surround) since they are all done on the fly?
Any advice would be great.
You probably have the list of all pictureboxes in your application somewhere (if you place them inside a container, that would be Children property). I suggest you simple foreach through all picture boxes and find min/max coordinates, and from there you can easily get the coordinates for the surrounding box. You might be able to do all that using one LINQ query.
A Windows Form application displays a main form. This main form contains few different Panel controls. Depending on some condition in that form one of these Panel controls is to be made active while the others are made invisible.
First panel contains a DataGridview, Second panel contains controls to display the details of the DataGridView. On Add button click (or) On selecting a record in DataGridView the second panel should be visible. I am using Visible property to show and hide panel, but the gap is showing there as shown in screenshot.
Please suggest best way to handle this.
You just need the panels to share the same location. You probably don't want to do that at design-time, as it makes future maintenance of the form difficult.
In the Form.Load event, set the location of the bottom panel to match the location of the top panel.
PanelDetails.Location = PanelDataGrid.Location;
Now when you hide one and show the other, they'll appear in the same place.
The smartest way is to keep the panels separate at the designer. This way any editings made on them can be done more easily, and all actual objects can be seen immediately.
In the designer, set the other panels' Visible properties to False, excep the first one on the top.
Form.Load:
Set all the other panels' locations to match the location of the first panel (on the top)
Set the form's height to match a desired height, which fits to your heightest panel
Use the buttons to toggle panels visibility (and possibly the form height too)
I currently have a windows form that I am using as a "holder" for many panels. All of these panels are being used like pages, so say I have a default panel, a details panel etc. They all cover the exact same area and i am using a top menu to have buttons to show/hide the correct panel.
The problem I have with this is that I cannot select one panel and edit it or simply bring it to the front to edit it in "design" mode, I currently have to keep sending the top panel to the back until I get the one I need. This is okay now, but eventually my program will have over 20 panel type pages, and this will get tedious.
Is there a better way to manage this, or is there an easier way than using panels?
All these panels are used like pages
Above line in your question suggests that you should be using TabPage instead of Panels.
Therefore, You can use a TabControl, and add TabPage to it both at design time as well as at runtime easily, and add controls of your choice to the different TabPage(s).
According to wikipedia:-
Tab is one that allows multiple documents to be contained within a single window, using tabs as a navigational widget for switching between sets of documents. which is essentially what you want to do.
As shown in the picture
You can then use Button to switch b/w different TabPage or show/hide TabPage.
It will not only solve your problem of designing at design time, it will also provide a "clean" user interface. Hope that helps!
Check this:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab_(GUI)
Use a TabControl instead. It will allow you to switch an active panel also in design time.
If you want to keep the panel method there is a way of working around the problem of one panel becoming an element of another. Drag the panel outside the boundary of the other panel (so that it is no longer an element of the other panel) and then re-position it using the arrow keys on your keyboard (i.e. not by dragging it into position over the other panel using the mouse). It seems like the panel will only become an element of another panel if it is dragged into position over the top of another panel using the mouse.
I have a Silverlight child window in place,
however I want to hide certain options i.e. check boxes from the user until a specific item on the current form is clicked.
Once that item has been click I need the window to resize dynamically to show the checkboxes down the side of the window. I believe this would be using an animation to make the transition smooth however I have no idea if this is even possible?
Any insight would be appreciated.
try using an accordion or an expander control, they have the functionality to animate grow and shrink the specific content they contain! Hope that this solves your problem