Common Ribbon Control in Windows Forms - c#

I want to develop windows forms application in which i want same ribbon control to appear on top with same Click Functions associated. Is there any solution to add same ribbon to all forms? I tried MDI, but i dont have requirement of multiple documents to be opened at same time. I tried adding same ribbon to all forms one by one, but then , i need to create click methods for all buttons in all forms seperately, that is tedious and time waste.
Also, i need to know any solution for smoothing transition between form change. When i use code:
Form f1=new Form();
f1.show();
this.hide();
This works correctly for switching between forms, but the problem is it creates a jerk on screen. So, is there any solution for smooth transitioning of forms?

You could create a base class that implements the ribbon. Just reuse (that is: derive from) that control for every form you have.
Create a container under the ribbon where you can put your actual form content in.
A problem might be that the designer often doesn't like this, so it might be quite some work to smooth thing out.

Related

A process on a single win form window

I am developing an application in Windows Form C#, it begins with an explanatory window, language selection and a start button when the desired language is selected, I want that when I press the start button, all the elements disappear and begin the application process, I had thought of creating a new form, but this opens a new window and I don't want that, I want everything to happen on a window. Apart from making all the previous controls invisible, is there any way to achieve this? Or maybe a way to make all the controls invisible without going one by one?
You could put multiple controls in a panel for example and hide/show entire panel.
If you dont want to do that, you could always do it in a loop
for example:
foreach ( var control in this.Controls)
{
control.Visible=false;
}
Ofcourse you could also add controls dynamically, but that might be hard for a beginner.
You could also make use of MDI forms, but that might be also not worth it.
SOLVED
Solved using user controls, user controls allow me to design the application interface in the same way as a form and I can add and remove that control from the form as many times as I want, making it possible to display numerous interfaces in a single Windows Forms window.
This solution was suggested by Jeroen van Langen in the comments of my question and it was exactly what I was looking for.

Why do we use UserControl?

ı have been serching this for a while but I couldn't come up with a conclusion. What is UserControl? For me we can do everything with creating new windows forms instead of User Control. I know there is a reason to use but it is not clear right now. If someone illuminates the mystery that would be great.
A user control is basically a grouping of other existing control, intended as a reusable component (i.e. composite control). If you need to place the same group of controls on different windows you'd rather group them in a user control, adding things like data validation for instance, and then reuse this control whenever you need it.
Here is some more reading.
UserControls allow you to reuse your code. For example if you need a small component that displays two values (code and description), with UserControls you can design it only one time and then reuse it in other forms.
Also, you can add your custom properties\methods to the UserControl; in this way you can define simple (or even more complex) functions associated to the GUI control.
Hope this helps.
imagine you have a GridView with some new methods you create, and which you want to use on several pages. There you go. A UserControl is useful. That's just one example
As the others have explained a UserControl groups 'real' Controls and the logic that makes them work together as one component.
Imagine an application where the user can decide wether it runs in MDI mode or with separate windows or with tabbed pages. You can add the UCs of your application to any of these easily.
Think of a MP3 player with various controls, buttons, labels and sliders and user drawn-gauges. If it's in a UC you can re-use it directly. If it is all on a window, how do you re-use it?
So UCs are about flexibilty and re-using visual components.

how to re-use my windows forms in a dashboard that works like HTML frames?

My C# standard windows forms app is finished, it has 10 forms. But the new requirement is now to change the "multiple forms" to one dashboard where you click a link on a bar on the side or top and switch between forms in the main area of the dashboard one at a time, pretty much exactly the same way an old HTML frame works with framesets (just imagine my Windows Forms are framesets).
Without going into much detail, each of these forms are pretty involved, multiple threads and so on, and I am looking for a simple trick to display them, as oposed to recoding the entire thing.
I looked at http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/37397/A-Multipanel-Control-in-C
but it's not what I want.
Is there a way to do this?
If you convert the forms into custom controls, it then becomes pretty simple to use the TabControl http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.tabcontrol.aspx to display the custom controls on the surfaces of the Tabs it contains.
By making them custom controls you avoid the mixing of the code for each of them (they remain distinct) but they also become easily added to other surfaces. I do this with a UI with a dozen display tabs.
I would recommend that you either use a tabbed control, or use an MDI Container, or a combination of both. The MDI has some nice behaviors that you'll get for free by implementing it. You could hard code each tab to each form, or have a dropdown that selects each view. If you want to manage the lifecycle of each form, you could implement a singleton pattern on each, or use IOC.
Not entirely sure this is going to solve your problem, but if you have questions or more details, let me know.
I resolved this using MDI as suggested above, works great in .NET Windows Forms 4.0 and 4.5.1.
In the parent form:
Declare a new child form.
myNewChildForm.MdiParent = this;
set child form StartPosition to Manual.
set child form Location to 0,0.
set child form WindowState to Maximized.
set child form Dock to Dockstyle.Fill
That does the trick.
Thank you all.

How to Create Header,Content, Side Bar and Footer section (layout) in .net MDI application

I have one big existing application using .Net - MDI C#,
Now I am going to change some looks for application, so it looks better for client.
But I a, facing a lot of issues when I try to add more than 2 images on the Parent MDI Form.
How to create Header, Content, Side Bar and Footer Section in MDI (For. Ref. find attach screenshot for application layout.)? Also can anyone tell me which tips like which control I used for this type layout?
You have been a member for 6 months, asked questions, but never answered a question,never commented on a question, and never even accepted an answer.
But if everyone in this community acted the same way, if everyone else was just a user, where would you be then? There would be no community, no resource, you would never get an answer or have any information to search. Think about it. Then think about actually joining the community and stop using it.
Now to answer your question, the Winforms MDI container does not natively support the functionality you are describing, however it does support siting UserControls directly on the MDI container. This makes emulating the functionality you describe very easy. Just create a UserControl that provides the graphical surface and controls you need and then use the docking properties to force the MDI container to place child forms correctly in the open client area instead of on top of a UserControl.
For example, to create a logo and then a menu bar underneath create a UserControl with the logo and menu bar. Create events and wire them up as needed to allow the MDI form to subscribe to events that pass any menu clicks back that the MDI form needs to handle. Finally site the UserControl directly on the MDI form and set it's docking property to top. Then any child forms will display correctly in the remaining client area underneath the menu bar on the UserControl.

How to create UI similar to file replace dialog in window 7 using C# Windows Forms?

I need to create a dialog that allows user to choose between several rather complex actions. I really like the usability of the windows 7 file replace dialog and I think it would suit my needs very well. Here's a screenshot for reference:
Is it possible to use the controls that were used for windows dialog? If not, how would you recommend creating UI similar to this dialog?
Seems like this could easily be done with a window containing a few labels for the text and three custom controls - with some images for the arrows and file icons - each of which changes their background image when the user mouses over them - and fires an event the window picks up on when they are clicked. Fairly standard WinForms stuff.
Is there a particular part of the process you need some extra help with? Like, for example, the mouse over?

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