I am currently trying to make a program where I have a picture of a calendar and when the user clicks on any given Friday a message box will appear. The current method I have been trying to do this is by placing a button over the dates, but I can't seem to find a way so that the button will be invisible and functional at the same time.
This is all in C# Windows Forms Application.
Any ideas?
There are several solutions:
Use an empty PictureBox instead of a Button. This is the nearest and quickest solution to what you say you want. Note that this secondary PictureBox needs to be a child of the calendar's one (with its background color set to Transparent). Transparency in Windows.Forms only applies to direct parents (it's more complex than this, but let's simplify).
Use the MouseUp event on the PictureBox where you are showing the calendar, and use the MouseEventArgs supplied as arguments to the event handler to find the X and Y position of the mouse within that control when the button was clicked.
Use a decent calendar/datepicker control instead of showing an image of one
Matter of fact: I don't endorse #1, and just put it there since it's what you seem to be asking for. I'd rather go with #2 or #3 (specially #3)
PS: if you want to really simulate Click, you should need to handle both MouseDown and MouseUp (a click usually means pressing a mouse button down on a control then releasing it within the same control)
Related
I have displayed an image in a Windows form. The user can draw a rectangle on top of this. When the user releases the mouse after drawing the image, I need to display a few buttons, similarly to showing a tooltip.
So far, I have:
Created a new WinForm named Toolbar
Removed titlebar
Added tooltip control on the WinForm
Added 4 buttons
Being an ASP.NET web developer I perceive the following items as missing:
Handle MouseUp event
Get co-ordinates of the mouse release location (say x1, y1)
Render my Toolbar Winform with top position as (x1, y1)
Let the respective buttons handle their responsibilities in their event handlers
Can you please help me validate my approach and show some pointers for the code?
You can use ContextMenuStrip (info from MSDN)
With 4 Items and just show it on MouseUp event with:
contextMenuStrip1.Show(Cursor.Position);
Two approaches:
This. You create a Popup form, which will be automatically hidden similar to popup menu and can host controls (buttons).
Display (draw) buttons inside your control, on top of its content (on top of graphics which you drawn), process mouse clicks, perform operations accordingly. Most difficult will be to draw nice looking buttons, to example, by using VisualStyleRenderer (xp-style).
Do not aks big question (containing many small one), rather try something, if it doesn't work or you are not satisfied with results, then come here and ask question (while also telling what you are trying to do). This way you will get help very quickly.
Hello,
Above is the program I am writing. On the right panel is basically two custom controls (the blue rectangle area) I created and just added them as controls to the background panel control when this winform program loads.
I used MS paint to draw out the pop up balloon that I want to see when my mouse enter this control's area. I want to do the following:
1. If mouse enter the control area, the yellow area balloon pop up and populate with the information of that specific control
2. If mouse move out of the control area, the pop up balloon disappear.
Can this be done with Winform application? I looked around and found out about Tooltip class but so far from researching I don't know if it does what I want to do.
I could be wrong but googling around gave me the impress that Tooltip offers very little in term of style. Ideally I want to make this pop up balloon into almost like a border-less pop up window where I can put image , font ect.....at will. Also Tooltip works if you hover over a button or specific field whereas I want the entire control area.
Can this be done? I appreciate if you can point me to any work around if there is one.
I wrote a comment, but I figure I'll expand it into a full answer. This is assuming you want a new control, which isn't a tooltip, for maximum customizability. I did something similar to this for work recently, to act as a non-modal info popup that disappears when clicked.
Creating a Custom Popup Form
What you want is essentially a floating popup that appears over your form, which means you'll want to define a new Form object, rather than a UserControl, as it won't actually be embedded within your other form.
Give it a multiline, non-editable textbox that you can fill with the information you want to populate, then simply call a new instance of the form on your Mouse_Enter event. Close it upon Mouse_Leave.
Adjusting The Style
You'll have to play with it a bit to get it to actually act like a popup and not just a window. I'd recommend setting it to a non-modal popup, and removing the border. You can write a function to automatically size it to its contents. I don't imagine you'll want the user manually resizing it.
Some other things to look into would be overriding the CreateParams property that comes with the basic Form object. You can force DropShadows and TopMost forms without making the form modal. Overriding ShowWithoutActivation to always return true will prevent the form from stealing focus when it pops up.
I'm not sure if you can pull off rounded edges like you have in your mockup. Perhaps you can pull it off with some wizardry in the OnPaint() function, but I couldn't tell you how to do it.
It might be a bit of a pain for fiddling around with, but you can get some good functionality and appearance out of it. If you think you can pull it off acceptably with the ToolTip class, go for it. It took me about a week to get my notifications where I wanted them (though I added several features that you probably don't need to worry about).
Examples
Some keywords to look up in related searches would be Toast Notification and Non-Modal Popup. This might be some use:
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/442983/Android-Style-Toast-Notification-for-NET
Since you already have implemented custom user controls you might want to try it again. Make a control that is that style and color, changes it's size based on it's text. You can feed it information (such as the text to display) from your existing user control object. You can also have the mouse enter/leave code reside in your first user control.
If you're not sure how to make a rectangle with round corners you can either make it on the fly using a graphics object (which will turn into a bitmap on the screen) or make it how you want it to look in GIMP (or photoshop if you have it) then use that image as the background on your user control. Make the default background transparent (so your voids above the round corners are not grey). If you make a pre loaded image you'll need to be aware you will only be able to scale it equally in Y and X directions. unequal scaling will make it look distorted.
Can you use the Mouse_Enter event on the control?
I have a view and within the view, there are two user control, each with a button on it. When the page loads, the first user control will load. when i click on the button in the first user control, I would like to slide the first user control left, making it invisible and display the second user control. when i click on the button in the second user control, I would like to slide the second user control right, making it invisible and displaying the first user control again. can anyone help on how to achieve this?
If I get correctly, you want something like Carousel in wpf. In case that's it, here's the link. It allows you to slide several items left-right to switch between them.
Another way to go would be using default animations in WPF, meaning DoubleAnimation applied to Margin property that increases margin from 0 to 500 (to move it off the screen) and back to 0 (to return it) or something like that. Head's up for double animation and moving controls is here and official documentation here.
Rather than hard-code an animation designed for your specific scenario, you could do something a little more generic and adapt the TransitionControl that uses pixel shaders. Set the content property and you can specify which shader effect you want it to apply as the transition.
I feel quite limited by the default ContextMenuStrip, as it only can contain buttons, and no Controls.
I was wondering that for a long time, and I already tried it, using forms, but it never really worked out.
I already have I idea on how to set the whole thing up, with events and items. The only problem I have is the paint method.
When you open a ContextMenu (ContextMenuStrip) you can set its position on the mouse cursor, and it will be there, even if that means that it goes beyond the active form. (So I can't use the Controls Class as inheritance, as they can only draw themself as a part of a form.
Now I thought to use the Form Class as a base for my ContextMenu, but those where placed on the screen randomly.
So what I actually need is a class (or something similar) that can draw itself, without problems, and can be placed accurately on the screen.
Any hint would be nice, thanks.
Greg the Mad
Your first statement is false -- you can have a TextBox or a ComboBox in a ContextMenuStrip.
MSDN ToolStripComboBox
MSDN ToolStripTextBox
From the designer there is a small drop-down arrow when your mouse is in the "Type Here" box (sometimes hard to click) that will allow you to change the type.
If you are looking to allow for any type of control to be displayed in a top down fashion inside of a container to be positionable... you could always make a custom control using FlowLayoutPanel. With it's properties FlowDirection=TopDown and WrapContents=False to keep a vertical approach. This will handle your "menu" basics and your new control can expose whichever events you wish from each Control. You will have to handle the logic of showing the panel and positioning with it's Location property as well.
I forgot to address the issue with drawing outside of the parent form. Notice that ContextMenus are smart and when they reach a boundary of their parent they draw away from it. You should logically be able to draw in the correct direction (Up/Down or Left/Right) from any right mouse click. Per your attempt with a Form, set StartPosition=Manual then prior to calling Show() or ShowDialog() set it's Location property respective to the X and Y parameters provided in the event args of MouseClick.
I'm writing a calendar control in .Net WinForms that will show a tooltip for each date.
What's the best way to determine when to show the tooltip?
Showing it immediately in MouseMove would make it get in the way, so I'd like it to show when the mouse hovers over each date cell.
The MouseHover event only fires on the first hover after MouseEnter, so I can't use it.
What's the best way to do this?
EDIT:I'm using WinForms
The time delay between Enter and Hover is specified in SystemInformation.MouseHoverTime.
If for some reason the built-in tooltip handling code for whichever UI framework you're using isn't sufficient, you could just spin up a Timer after each MouseMove and show a Tooltip when it fires. Obviously, you'd need to reset the Timer each time the mouse is moved to prevent a long series "rain of tooltips".
It would be helpful to know which technology you are using (ASP.NET? Forms? WPF?) because they all have different ways of implementing tooltips:
With ASP.NET, you can simply set the
ToolTip property of a control (such
as a Label control that shows a number in your calendar), and it
will automatically show a tooltip
after a slight delay when hovering
over the control.
In Forms, I think you have to
actually create a ToolTip object then
attach a control to it.
In WPF, you can add a Label.ToolTip
element to your XAML code.
In all cases, though, there's a built-in way to do it, so it might not be necessary for you to write your own code at all.
If your situation is so custom that you do need to write your own code, I'd really need to know more about how you are representing the numbers in your calendar to help you out.
Last thing: you didn't really ask this--and it may not be under your control--but you might want to ask yourself whether a tooltip is the best way to show calendar information in the first place. If space is really tight, then the answer might be "yes", but if you have enough space to show the calendar events (or even the first few words of each event), this would save the user from having to "scrub the whole calendar" (i.e., roll over each date individually).
-Dan
Have a look at the AutoPopDelay, InitialDelay and ReshowDelay properties of the ToolTip class, as they control the behaviour of the tooltip.
I generally play around with the values until I get something that 'feels' right. It's annoying when a tooltip shows immediately, and for short tooltips, it's also annoying when they disappear too soon. For really long tooltips, say, several paragraphs (yes, poor design decision, but if there's a lot of info to read, at least let me read it!) then it should stay open as long as my mouse is stationary.
A tooltip example from MSDN gives the following values:
AutoPopDelay = 5000;
InitialDelay = 1000;
ReshowDelay = 500;
// Force the ToolTip text to be displayed whether or not the form is active.
ShowAlways = true;
As mentioned in a comment, the poster wants to trigger the tooltip programatically. For that, ToolTip.Show( ) needs to be called. To get a delay effect, you'll likely want to have a timer running which counts the time that the mouse is stationary. Whenever the mouse enters, leaves or moves within the control, this time should be reset.