I'm trying to make a WindowsFormApplication in Visual Studio 2015 and need some help.
I've been trying to search for the answer on internet but can find out how to do the following:
I have two windows (solutions?). I open the second window with a button in the first one with this code:
this.Hide();
intermec prodinter = new intermec();
prodinter.ShowDialog();
My question is:
How can i "include" the second window (like "include" in PHP) instead of close the first window and then open the next one, like it does now?
A Form is just another Control. Think of it as a Container (because it holds other Controls).
A User Control can also hold more than one Control. There are ways you can display a Window inside another Window in a WinForms app, but the desired effect is not always guaranteed. So it would be best to place all of your controls (for "page 1", for example) in a User Control called "Page1", and then, when appropriate, add that User Control to the Form, and set its Dock property to Fill.
And when it's time to show a different "page", Hide(); "Page1", and Show(); "Page2".
I think you are talking about form inheritance:
Just create a form, lets call it as frmBase. And add some controls onto frmBase which you want to have on other forms as well.
Create other form, lets call it as frmDerived.
In the code behind of frmDerived, just do the following:
// derive the frmDerived form from frmBase
public partial class frmDerived : frmBase
{
public frmDerived()
{
InitializeComponent();
}
}
And then just check the frmDerived form design, it should include everything from frmBase.
And you may want to make the access modifier of some controls of frmBase to Public as required to access them on frmDerived.
I hope this will help you. :)
Related
So I'm trying to learn a thing or two about coding with c# and something i find quite annoying is the way to switch between forms.
Lets say for a game you want to go to the options panel and when you click the button to get there it closes that window(form1) and opens a new window(form2) for my app.
It doesn't look very nice having windows opening and closing like that so I'm wondering what i can do in order to make it switch from form1 to form2 without closing form1 and not open form2 in a new window (Everything switched on the main window(form1).
Might sound a bit confusing but hopefully you understand what i mean.
The code I'm using so far to switch between forms:
ChangeOptions optionchanger = new ChangeOptions ();
this.Hide();
optionchanger.Show();
You could add two panels to a single form, each of which contains the controls you would otherwise have added to one of the two forms. Then switch between the panels by changing their visibility or Z-order. This is slightly tricky in the Windows Forms Designer because you'll have to design the two panels, then position them in the same spot on the containing form.
As #ryanyuyu points out, you can set the Dock property to DockStyle.Fill and switch which panel is on top using Control.BringToFront or Control.SendToBack(). This is also a decent way to interact with the two panels in the designer, as you can switch which is on top from a context menu option.
To truly have two forms, your only option is to show a dialog. Hiding your current window is of course optional.
However, you can:
Group all the controls on a given "form" into a Panel or GroupBox, then show/hide the container control.
Put all the controls into UserControls and have an instance of each UserControl on the main form. You can then show/hide the control.
I prefer the second method as it keeps the encapsulation tighter. Since you already have two forms, its easy to convert to user controls.
I'm new in C#, and I wanted to know if there was any way to show a screen with certain elements, and then with the click of a button, switch to another screen, similar to an installer.
From my experience in Java, I would just use a few JPanels and then hide only the one i want visible.
However, I'm new to C# forms and it's very different from Java swing. Anyone understand my problem and can tell me pretty much how this works? Thanks.
Simple approach
Just use a Grid with multiple Grids inside of it. Set the Visibility property of each internal Grid (except the first one you want to show) to Hidden or Collapsed, and then set them to Visible when you want to display them.
Better approach
Create a class for each section, each of which derives from the same parent class. Create a DataTemplate for the parent class, then just have instances of the template load into the original Grid through a ContentPresenter.
You can try this creating new forms. From my experience I've tried this:
Form2 formTwo = new Form2(); // creates instance
formTwo.Show(); // displays the new form
this.WindowState = FormWindowState.Minimized; // minimizes previous form
this.ShowInTaskbar = false; // hides it from taskbar
Keep in mind that this does not close the previous form. I would recommend setting ShowIntaskbar as True if you don't mind the user seeing the form minimized.
EDIT: If you want to show new elements I suggest you can try adding a new Form class to the project then using the designer.
Suppose I create a window form Form.cs. It has some controls(label1, label2, button1, button1 etc.). I also create a new window form New_Form.cs under Form.cs. Now I want to access label1, label2, button1 in New_Form.cs. How can I do this?
I don't want to be offensive, but I think that using control from another form is not a good design.
In my oppinion it is not good to couple one class (in this question form1) to the inner implementation of another class (controls of `form2´. If you, for some reason, have to change the inner design (e.g. showing the data with a different control) of that class, you have to change the other class too. That makes coding (and of course error searching) quite difficult.
If there is a need to exchange data between two classes, I would prefer using publioc Properties for that. In the inner design you can attach them to a control, but then this "coupling" stays in the same class)
Although this can be bad design, you can access properties in another Form by making them public and then accessing them like this:
Form1 frm = new Form1();
Form1.button1.Visible = false;
Also here is an msdn page pertaining to your question
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/f6525896%28v=vs.90%29.aspx
You can access the required properties by setting them as public properties in your Parent form. Not sure as why you would want the button, if you want some thing to be executed for the click then you should encapsulate the logic into separate methods and them make the call.
If you have fewer details to pass then make constructors for the new form which would accept those values
ChildForm child = new ChildForm([label1], [label2])
or
ChildForm child = new ChildForm([parent form reference]) // so you could access require components
Firstly, I have a project with a Windows Form that references another project with WPF forms. The windows form has an elementhost which child is one of the WPF documents in the other project.
Now, on this WPF document I want to have a button that upon a click can open another wpf form. Either as a new standalone WPF form, as a modal or whatever.
I cannot, on the button click event, say
WPFform2 WPFform2=new WPFform2();<br>
WPFform2.Show();
... as many other threads on the net suggest, since the show method does not exist.
My solution does not allow some sort of call that changes the main Form´s elementhost, so that is not an option for me.
All my WPF forms derives from UserControl:
public partial class WPFform1: UserControl
The form must be derived from Window to have the Show() method.
Just create a new window that contains only the form you want to show and call Show on it. Or change the control's base class to Window (you will have to rewrite it both in XAML and in the code behind), nothing should really change, Window supports most of UserControl's features.
Does a Winform Framework exist for something similar to ASP.NET Masterpage or MS Access SubForm ?
With MS Access SubForm you can do like ASP.NET Masterpage. It's a huge loss of time with Winform when having to create a lot of complex form. You have to compensate with either Code Generation which create code duplication or do Runtime Dynamic Form which is much more difficult.
I searched on the Internet but can't find any.
The closes thing to Master Pages is Form Inheritance. It is regular class inheritance but also supported by the Designer. To try it:
1) Add a form with Ok and Cancel Buttons, Build project (essential)
2) Choose Project, Add new item, Windows and then the Inherited Form template. Pick the Form from step 1) as the base Form. Add some controls.
3) Repeat step 2) a few times
4) make some Buttons to show the Forms, Build and Test
5) Go back to the Form from 1) and change a few things (Background), run again
Your other tool are UserControls, they work much the same as in ASP.NET. You develop them like Forms and apply them as Controls.
You can add forms to a form, or to a panel on a form.
public Form1()
{
InitializeComponent();
Form2 embeddedForm = new Form2();
embeddedForm.TopLevel = false;
Controls.Add(embeddedForm);
embeddedForm.Show();
}
You will need to set the FormBorderStyle to None, unless you want to have an actual moveable form inside your form.
I was in a bit of a hurry at the time of posting, but Henk is right. You should consider creating a user control for this instead. Not to be confused with a custom control, which is intended for when you need to do your own drawing instead of using collections of standard Windows controls.