Develop Reference

Bringing panels to the front in C#

For some reason when I use code such as
this.panel.BringToFront();
this.panel.show();
this.panel.visible = true
And I set the other panels to false, etc.
Current Code which shows the bottom panel 3 but blanks out for panel 4 and 5.
private void button10_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
this.panel3.Location = this.panel3.Location;
this.panel3.Show();
this.panel3.BringToFront();
this.panel4.SendToBack();
this.panel4.Hide();
this.panel5.SendToBack();
this.panel5.Hide();
}
private void button4_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
this.panel5.Location = this.panel5.Location;
this.panel5.Show();
this.panel5.BringToFront();
this.panel4.SendToBack();
this.panel4.Hide();
this.panel3.SendToBack();
this.panel3.Hide();
}
private void button3_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
this.panel4.Location = this.panel4.Location;
this.panel4.Show();
this.panel4.BringToFront();
this.panel5.SendToBack();
this.panel5.Hide();
this.panel3.SendToBack();
this.panel3.Hide();
}
This doesnt work tho and when I click button3 and button 4 it displays none of the panels and when I click on button10 it displays panel3(the bottom panel) which it is supposed to but why doesn't it display panels 4 and 5.
I have also made the buttons do this and it has the same error:
private void button4_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
panel5.Visible = true;
panel4.Visible = false;
panel3.Visible = false;
}
But this also doesn't work. I have asked some people on discord but no one seems to know anything these days and just get roles for free which is stupid but ye that's why I am here asking for help.

When you add panels on other panels, It goes inside the first panel. When you try panel.BringToFront() it does not work because the first panel is in the back.
Here is what you can do...
Go to View -> Other Windows -> Document Outline
Then try to get panels to the same level and move the panels using arrow keys instead of dragging using the mouse.

It seems you have added the panels inside the other panel which you want to display. Show it doesn't show the proper panel when you click the buttons.
Ensure the parent of your panels should be same. If the parent of your panels are different, then change the parent of the panels are same.

C# Make item show

I am trying to hide a progress bar until a button is clicked. Once the button is clicked I would like the progress bar to show. How would I do that? I am new to C#.

1- In the form view, on your progress bar properties, make sure that the "Visible" property is set to false.
2- Create a click event for the button (you can double click it in the form view, it will generate the event).
3- In the click event function, set your progress bar visibility to true. (YourProgressBarID.Visible = true) and you might want to hide that button, you could use YourButtonID.Visible = false

During the initialization of your form, set the visibility of your ProgressBar to false or set it in from the Designer Properties.
public Form1()
{
InitializeComponent();
progressBar1.Visible = false;
}
Now, on your button click event just make the visibility of your ProgressBar to true.
private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
progressBar1.Visible = true;
}

Hide image when click outside of image in wpf

When my WPF application loads, an image is shown in center.
how can i handle mouse click outside of image. when user clicks outside of image it hide.
My code is in c#.

You can simply add a handler to the top level control, eg. Grid, Window, etc. In that handler, you can check whether the control that was clicked on was the Image and if it wasn't, then you could hide it:
The XAML:
<Grid PreviewMouseLeftButtonDown="Grid_PreviewMouseLeftButtonDown">
...
<Image Name="TheImage" Source="/WpfApplication2;component/Images/Add_16.png" />
...
</Grid>
The code behind:
private void Grid_PreviewMouseLeftButtonDown(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e)
{
if (e.OriginalSource != TheImage)
{
TheImage.Visibility = Visibility.Hidden;
}
}
While this fulfils your requirements, it should be noted that once hidden, the Image will no longer be 'clickable'.

just put the code MyImage.Visibility = System.Windows.Visibility.Hidden; in whichever event you want to capture.
for eg:
private void MyButton_Click_1(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
MyImage.Visibility = System.Windows.Visibility.Hidden;
}
private void MyTextbox_PreviewMouseDown_1(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e)
{
MyImage.Visibility = System.Windows.Visibility.Hidden;
}
private void MyWindow_MouseDown(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e)
{
MyImage.Visibility = System.Windows.Visibility.Hidden;
}
where MyImage is the name of image, MyTextbox is the name of textbox, MyButton is the name of Button and MyWindow is the name of Main Window

you can simply write
YourImageName.Visibility = Visibility.Hidden;
Write this code to any of the control i.e. TextBox or Button.

first click on the form to select it. then go to the event's section (near property section) and double-click the click event to make a function call when a form is clicked. in the code compare the sender object with the IsEqual(obj) method and see the sender is same image or it's not. if not hide it. :)

You can handle the click event of Application current window , and inside that event you can check if the mouse position is within that image or outside of that image , on basis of this you can set your image visibility condition you prefer .
Code sample example :
//registering event
Application.Curent.mainWindow.MouseRightButtonDown += MainWindow_MouseRightButtonDown;
//event implementation
void MouseRightButtonDown(object sender , MouseButtonEventArgs e)
{
//here you can check the ui element for image control using sender
//below will let you know the position of Click
e.GetPosition(// pass the ui element here)
}
Note : The above code shown is at app level click handling . If you
dont want at app level you can take the parent xaml within which the
image is present and do the same

Designing a dynamic panel

I am new to C# and I want to design a GUI for a image processing application in c#. I have a very basic rudimentary layout designed as shown below
Here, the image plane is fixed and it will show a live stream video. I have designed all the buttons frame and the side panel. But I do not know how to dynamically change the side panel for each button I click. For example, If I click button1_1, I want some things in the side panel and for button1_2, some other things in it. How do I go about doing it.
EDIT:
Thanks for the answers. I see tab controls is an option. But I want a new panel evertime a click a button. which can further open forms. Is it possible?

OK, let's see. It's easy to do with "TabControl" or array of "Panel"s.
1.Do it with TabControl.
You can design GUI in TabControl in multiple subTabs(if you don't know how please ask.). Then you change it in button click event, to make subTab you wanna show(which means make it visiable and not visiable for other subTabs.)
2.Do it with array of panel.
You can use panel[] panels. In button click event, you hide other panels and show the one you want.
Hope answer helps you!
private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
tabControl1.SelectedIndex = 0;
tabControl1.TabPages[0].Text = "First";
}
private void button2_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
tabControl1.SelectedIndex = 1;
}
private void button3_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
tabControl1.SelectedIndex = 2;
}

you may want to add split container in your form.
Create UserControl for each buttons.
Code for the button click event
//Button1Click Event
private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
UserControl1 m_UserControl = new UserControl1();
splitContainer1.Panel2.Controls.Clear();
splitContainer1.Panel2.Controls.Add(m_UserControl);
}
//Button2Click Event
private void button2_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
UserControl2 m_Usercontrol2 = new UserControl2();
splitContainer1.Panel2.Controls.Clear();
splitContainer1.Panel2.Controls.Add(m_Usercontrol2);
}
you can do this if you want to change what usercontrol display in a panel at run time.
Correct me if i misunderstood your question.

In WinForms, you could use a tab control and just change the selected tabs index when a button is pressed. More specifically, when its click event is fired. Here is a good tutorial on using the TabControl and here is a tutorial on wiring up click events.
EDIT:
This is a better tutorial.
Since you can't hide the tabs of a tabcontrol without using WPF, you may need to use something else, if you don't like the way they look. A good workaround if you only have a couple of buttons and thus views, would be to use panels. When button one is clicked show panel one and hide panel two, etc. Here would be the code:
private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
pane2.visible = false;
pane1.visible = true;
}
private void button2_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
pane1.visible = false;
pane2.visible = true;
}
Hope this helps you!

How to remove the focus from a TextBox in WinForms?

I need to remove the focus from several TextBoxes. I tried using:
textBox1.Focused = false;
Its ReadOnly property value is true.
I then tried setting the focus on the form, so as to remove it from all the TextBoxes, but this also fails to work:
this.Focus();
and the function returns false when a textbox is selected.
So, how do I remove the focus from a TextBox?

You can add the following code:
this.ActiveControl = null; //this = form

Focusing on the label didn't work for me, doing something like label1.Focus() right?
the textbox still has focus when loading the form, however trying Velociraptors
answer, worked for me, setting the Form's Active control to the label like this:
private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
this.ActiveControl = label1;
}

Try disabling and enabling the textbox.

You can also set the forms activecontrol property to null like
ActiveControl = null;

Focus sets the input focus, so setting it to the form won't work because forms don't accept input. Try setting the form's ActiveControl property to a different control. You could also use Select to select a specific control or SelectNextControl to select the next control in the tab order.

Try this one:
First set up tab order.
Then in form load event we can send a tab key press programmatically to application. So that application will give focus to 1st contol in the tab order.
in form load even write this line.
SendKeys.Send("{TAB}");
This did work for me.

This post lead me to do this:
ActiveControl = null;
This allows me to capture all the keyboard input at the top level without other controls going nuts.

A simple solution would be to kill the focus, just create your own class:
public class ViewOnlyTextBox : System.Windows.Forms.TextBox {
// constants for the message sending
const int WM_SETFOCUS = 0x0007;
const int WM_KILLFOCUS = 0x0008;
protected override void WndProc(ref Message m) {
if(m.Msg == WM_SETFOCUS) m.Msg = WM_KILLFOCUS;
base.WndProc (ref m);
}
}

I've found a good alternative! It works best for me, without setting the focus on something else.
Try that:
private void richTextBox_KeyDown(object sender, KeyEventArgs e)
{
e.SuppressKeyPress = true;
}

I made this on my custom control, i done this onFocus()
this.Parent.Focus();
So if texbox focused - it instantly focus textbox parent (form, or panel...)
This is good option if you want to make this on custom control.

It seems that I don't have to set the focus to any other elements. On a Windows Phone 7 application, I've been using the Focus method to unset the Focus of a Textbox.
Giving the following command will set the focus to nothing:
void SearchBox_KeyDown(object sender, System.Windows.Input.KeyEventArgs e)
{
if (e.Key == Key.Enter)
{
Focus();
}
}
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.control.focus.aspx
It worked for me, but I don't know why didn't it work for you :/

//using System;
//using System.Collections.Generic;
//using System.Linq;
private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
FocusOnOtherControl(Controls.Cast<Control>(), button1);
}
private void FocusOnOtherControl<T>(IEnumerable<T> controls, Control focusOnMe) where T : Control
{
foreach (var control in controls)
{
if (control.GetType().Equals(typeof(TextBox)))
{
control.TabStop = false;
control.LostFocus += new EventHandler((object sender, EventArgs e) =>
{
focusOnMe.Focus();
});
}
}
}

The way I get around it is to place all my winform controls. I make all labels and non-selecting winform controls as tab order 0, then my first control as tab order 2 and then increment each selectable control's order by 1, so 3, 4, 5 etc...
This way, when my Winforms start up, the first TextBox doesn't have focus!

you can do this by two method
just make the "TabStop" properties of desired textbox to false now it will not focus even if you have one text field
drag two text box
make one visible on which you don't want foucus which is textbox1
make the 2nd one invisible and go to properties of that text field and select
tabindex value to 0 of textbox2
and select the tabindex of your textbox1 to 1
now it will not focus on textbox1

If all you want is the optical effect that the textbox has no blue selection all over its contents, just select no text:
textBox_Log.SelectionStart = 0;
textBox_Log.SelectionLength = 0;
textBox_Log.Select();
After this, when adding content with .Text += "...", no blue selection will be shown.

Please try set TabStop to False for your view control which is not be focused.
For eg:
txtEmpID.TabStop = false;

You can try:
textBox1.Enable = false;

using System.Windows.Input
Keyboard.ClearFocus();

Kinda late to the party in 2022, however none of the solutions here worked for me (idk why) using .Net_6.0_windows, so I've come up with this solution:
Label focusoutLabel = new Label() {
Text = "",
Name = "somegenericplaceholdernamethatwillneverbeusedinmyprogram",
Visible = false,
};
this.Controls.Add(focusoutLabel);
this.ActiveControl = focusoutLabel;
^Place this code to your Form load handler^

In the constructor of the Form or UserControl holding the TextBox write
SetStyle(ControlStyles.Selectable, false);
After the InitializeComponent();
Source: https://stackoverflow.com/a/4811938/5750078
Example:
public partial class Main : UserControl
{
public Main()
{
InitializeComponent();
SetStyle(ControlStyles.Selectable, false);
}