Develop Reference

Small game menu in C# forms

I'm supposed to create a small game menu in C#. What i'm doing now is that with each button you click in the main menu, you get a new form so it's something like this.
User clicks: Play
Form playMenu = new Form();
playMenu.Show();
this.Hide();
New form including buttons appears with new options to choose from.
I feel like there is a better way to do this but i have no idea how.
Something in a way of having just 1 form instead of multiple and having buttons something like this:
User clicks: Options
playButton.visible = false;
options.Visible = true;
Doing the above makes it possible to just have 1 form but wouldn't it be difficult to make changes to the buttons?
I have no idea if this is the right way to do this.

You have to design your sub-menus as UserControls instead of Forms, put them all in a single container (Panel) with Dock = DockStyle.Fill and toggle their Visible or z-order (with BringToFront and SendToBack methods).
This gives you much flexibility in terms of visual layout and data flow.

"Include" instead of ShowDialog()

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. :)

Switching between forms (closing one form, then opening another)

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.

keyboard shortcuts do not work when adding a form to a panel c#

I am writing an application where I have a form with a panel. I have noticed that when I add another form to the panel, that the added form's keyboard shortcuts stop working.
I am using the following code :
MainMenu m = new MainMenu();
m.TopLevel = false;
m.FormBorderStyle = System.Windows.Forms.FormBorderStyle.None;
m.Dock = System.Windows.Forms.DockStyle.Fill;
pnl.Controls.Add(m);
m.Visible = true;
pnl.ResumeLayout();
Is there anyway to make the keyboard shortcuts work?
Regards

My first guess (and it's totally a guess) is that you need to pass the parent/owner when constructing the child object, rather than just assigning parent ... could you show us that part of your code?
Also, just glancing over your code, it seems strange to, for a MainMenu, set Dock to Fill....

Adding a form to a panel inside another form? That is not a supported scenario; frankly I'm surprised it doesn't throw an exception. A better way to do this would be to use UserControls.

I found out that it was due to focus issues.
I have since converted my forms to user controls and the problems have gone away.

winforms panels vs java swing panels

In java swing I can insert panels into panels and so on, and not have to build a brand new window for every view of my applicaiton, or mess around removing and adding controls.
Theres a panel clas sin C# however I cant see any way of creating a 'panel form' or basically just a form in form designer thats a panel and its contents.
How do I do this then and work the way I did with java swing?

Usually i just dock different forms within eachother setting the IsMdiContainer Property to true on the parent window. Then i create subforms that i dock using the following function:
static class FormUtil
{
static public void showForm(Form sender, Control reciever)
{
sender.ControlBox = false;
sender.FormBorderStyle = FormBorderStyle.None;
sender.ShowInTaskbar = false;
sender.TopLevel = false;
sender.Visible = true;
sender.Dock = DockStyle.Fill;
reciever.Controls.Clear(); //clear panel first
reciever.Controls.Add(sender);
}
}
then whenever i need to dock a form inside a panel on the parents form i just do:
FormUtil.showForm(new SomeForm(), this.splitContainer1.Panel1);
This allows me to delegate some of the form creation to different designers. Works like a charm for me, love to hear if theres a better way of doing it.

Actually, you can use the panel control and set it's Dock property to Fill. That way, your panel will be the entire canvas of the form. Then, you can add child panels as needed either through code behind or through forms designer.

There's the concept of user controls which basicly provides you with a panel like designer surface , not to mention that you can create atomic forms (which can be reused) and register them as inheritable, that way you can provide inheritance too.