I just started working with Visual Studio C# and to be honest I didn't fully understand what happens when we chose to hide a form or a user control.
My intuition tells me this hide/show method is kind of "inefficient" way to get an user through all the functions of my app.
So I am asking you guys if there is another workaround to "load" user control parts in a form.
Right now my main_menu form has all the user control objects placed on the form, but hidden, and I am using buttons to show them.
Is there a better way to achieve the same result? (I was thinking of a workaround like having an empty panel where I can load the User Control - not sure if possible)
Thank you!
You can create the controls on the fly and add them to or remove them from the Controls collection. On the class level, define this field
private Control _currentPanel;
You can use a more specific type here, if you are deriving all your panels from a common base type.
Then change the panel with
// Remove previous one.
if (_currentPanel != null) {
Controls.Remove(_currentPanel);
}
// Add new one
_currentPanel = new MyNewPanel();
//TODO: possibly set the panels Docking property to Fill here.
Controls.Add(_currentPanel);
In the example I am working with the form's Controls collection; however, you might have to use the Controls collection of some container control holding the panel.
Related
I created this User Control:
I added that User Control to the main Form and now I want to customize it.
So I will have to add text to those 3 Buttons, text in Label, populate ListBox and setting Click Events for the buttons.
What is the proper way to do that?
I looked around on the web and apparently the way to do it is to add public properties in user control that would expose individual property of control that I need.
Something like:
public string Button1Text
{
get
{
return btn1.Text;
}
set
{
btn1.Text = value;
}
}
If I go this route, I would have to add quite a few public properties to this simple user control.
But isnt it easier just to expose whole control in user control like this?
public Button MyButton1
{
get { return this.btn1; }
set { this.btn1 = value; }
}
That way the Main Form can simply access control and its properties as they are needed.
First method is better from the perspective of encapsulation. Second method causes users (forms) of your control to depend on the view of your control, and this prevents changes to the view in the future.
The first bit of code is the correct way to do it. You will have to create a lot of them but it is the proper way to do it.
The first one is much better where you only create properties for each individual property of the button you wish to be able to access from the Parent control.
If you use the second way, then anyone who wishes to use your control will be able to move and resize individual controls inside your control. Then it really isn't a custom control anymore, but more of a panel that is harder to use than a panel. I can't think of any reason why to be able to allow the Parent to move around individual elements in a subcontrol.
I have a C# Forms tab application. Each TabPage has a menu on the left (Outlook style navigation panel), and a Panel on the right for content.
If I want the content panel for tab page 0, how would I go about fetching it? I'm a bit stumped because I don't know how to index into the controls collection on a tab page. The following is underlined in red, so I believe its wrong.
Panel panel = tabControl.TabPages[0].Controls["Panel"];
EDIT: remove Window in Panel sub question. It will be moved to a separate question.
Sorry about the beginner questions. I'm a C/C++ guy with lots of MFC time, and C# UI is a bit frustrating at the moment.
foreach (Control control in tabControl1.TabPages[0].Controls)
{
// if (control.Name == "panel1")
}
You can always call this recursively on control.Controls to find a control in any hierarchy. control.Name can be used to find your specific control.
You can't show a Form, inside a Panel. You could create Custom Control where you can add your functionality and add that control to a Panel.
in order to create a new form for example you need to create a variable of what ever form that it is you want to create.
example
Form2 frm2 = new Form2();
frm2.Show();
if you want to show that form in the panel then the panel would be the Owner keep in mind the difference between Owner and Parent
please paste what ever code you have so far and we can suggest the necessary changes
Finally, how does one display a Window in a Panel? - you don't want to do that. If you want a window and a panel to share a piece of UI functionality, create a user control with all the the functionality and then you can place it in a form or in a panel.
A possibility to encapsulate complex UI content is to create a UserControl. This way you can create a reusable piece of complex UI you can basically add as a "blob" inside a form.
The reason why
Panel panel = tabControl.TabPages[0].Controls["Panel"];
is underlined red is because the Controls collection returns a Control which might be a Panel but also might be something else. So you need to cast it:
Panel panel = tabControl.TabPages[0].Controls["Panel"] as Panel;
if (panel != null)
{
// got a panel here so do something
}
Also: MSDN has some good resources - you should make use of it.
I'm making a program to generate code for me, and I'm fashioning the UI after Game Maker due to how easy the interface is. It has a SplitContainer with Panel1 containing a TreeView and Panel2 containing an arbitrary amount of self-contained windows (real windows, not some hacky workaround). I wanted to use user-controls to store the controls I use to modify things, but I can't figure out any way to put it in a window inside the splitContainer's Panel2. Can anyone help me?
Here's a good example:
http://i.stack.imgur.com/CG6kO.png
Those two sprite property windows are what I'm trying to do.
i think what you are looking for is called mdi-container
however the only real mdi container i've seen so far (in .NET) is a form ... sadly no panel or something similar...
but if you just want the "window in a window" effect: simply create your new form, set the TopLevel property of that instance to false, and add the instance to your form/panel/splitcontainer/whatever like any other usual control
You could try using an MDI form and to implement your TreeView control, check out some sort of docking panel. I've used this one in the past (http://sourceforge.net/projects/dockpanelsuite/).
It is very flexible. You set up one of these dockpanel forms, docked to the left of your MDI form. It will always be "on top" and the user can resize it exactly like the splitter control on a form. If you like, it can also has an "autohide" feature which may or may not be desirable in your case.
It can then contain you treeview, which can load all the MDI Child forms you like.
You'll find you're not fighting how "Windows" really want to behave and things will run a lot more smoothly.
Put it into the Panel2's Control collection via the Add() method, apply coordinates, anchor and docking programmaticaly.
I did similar thing once, and for that reason, I have ReplaceControl method, which I paste below:
static public void ReplaceControl(Control ToReplace, Form ReplaceWith) {
ReplaceWith.TopLevel=false;
ReplaceWith.FormBorderStyle=FormBorderStyle.None;
ReplaceWith.Show();
ReplaceWith.Anchor=ToReplace.Anchor;
ReplaceWith.Dock=ToReplace.Dock;
ReplaceWith.Font=ToReplace.Font;
ReplaceWith.Size=ToReplace.Size;
ReplaceWith.Location=ToReplace.Location;
ToReplace.Parent.Controls.Add(ReplaceWith);
ToReplace.Visible=false;
}
Only thing left to do is to create some control manually on the form, as the placeholder for your Form. Use label, for example.
From How to implement a-form-inside-a-form with runtime embedded forms switching?
I am working on windows application form. I have a CustomControl (say MasterControl) on which i put a split panel and now my MasterControl is split into three parts say:
Pannel1
Pannel2
Pannel3
Now i develop three custom controls and put one in each of pannels e.g
Pannel1 have CustomControl1
Pannel2 have CustomControl2
Pannel3 have CustomControl3
Now somewhere in CustomControl3 I need to access a public member of CustomControl1. For which i wrote the following code:
((MasterControl)this.Parent)._oCustomControl1.PublicMember = this.PublicMember;
The code above doen't work in my case. When this line of code is executed in debug mode then a message box appears and states that "There is no code available for current location"
It's a really bad design for your controls to depend on how are the arranged on the parent container.
e.g. inside your third control, you are quering the property of the first one by accessing it from the parent, and then it's child control by name.
Your code will break very easily, if it can be compiled at all - I think the problem you're having is the order of compilation: in order for your parent form to be compiled, it needs to have child user controls finished. On the other hand the user controls you created need to have finished form.
It would be far better to set whatever behaviour you're after from the container of those controls - for example, by reacting to events from the control, and setting appropriate stuff on appropriate other controls (there are other ways as well ofcourse - the point is in the direction and flow of information - who's setting and using what).
If you have a split panel in your master control, you should go two levels up to find your master control:
((MasterControl)this.Parent.Parent)._oCustomControl1.PublicMember = this.PublicMember;
I found the answer by myself. I am positing here because it might help some one else.
The exact code is:
((MasterControl)this.Parent.Parent.Parent)._oCustomControl1.PublicMember = this.PublicMember;
Basically my coustomcontrol3 lies inside a split container panel, so when i wrote:
this.Parent then it points to Panel In which it is residing and if i wrote
this.Parent.Parent then it points to the spliter container in which above panel reside and if i wrote
this.Parent.Parent.Parent then it points to control in which this split container resides
I got the idea from "Farzin Zaker" answer, so thanks to him for his contribution
I have a bit of an odd question.
My situation is as following:
I have a form, It contains several user controls that in turn contains either other user controls or other basic controls such as TextBox, RichTextBox and such.
As part of the logic when editing the text boxes, I create another control programatically and inform the form about it. Other controls on the form may react in turn and create more controls.
Trouble is, These controls steal focus from my control when they are created and added to the form/other controls.
Is there a way to prevent my control from losing focus while that happens?
Maybe you should include in the logic, the tab indexes first, and when you add the control, set the tab index to the last tab index + 1, your job would be easier, if you set the tab order first on the controls, and set the constant to the last tab index at design time, see here,:
private const int LAST_TAB_INDEX = 5; // an Example
private int lastTabIndex = LAST_TAB_INDEX;
private void AddControl(){
// Set up your control
Control ctl = new Control();
// ....
ctl.TabIndex = lastTabIndex;
this.Add(ctl);
this.lastTabIndex++;
}
You can see from the example how the tab index is incremented, in that way, it will prevent
the controls from stealing the focus...
Hope this helps,
Best regards,
Tom.
Controls can't accept (steal) focus unless they are visible and enabled. Have you tried creating the controls with one or both of these as false, and then turning them on when appropriate?