Develop Reference

Making sure that a C# form has focus when it should

I am a fairly new to Visual C# but have coded in Delphi for a long time. I have created a form that has a simple panel that is hidden unless you type in a particular key on the keyboard (I do have "KeyPreview" set for true for the form and I am using the KeyDown event to handle determining if the correct key was pressed and to make the panel visible/invisible). Just beneath the panel is a webBrowser component.
What is happening is as follows:
When my form initially starts, I have code for the "Shown" event that makes sure the form has focus initially:
private void Form1_Shown(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
if (!Focused)
{
Focus();
}
}
When the form is focused at this point, my code for detecting the proper keystroke to get the panel to appear or disappear works fine.
Here is where things get strange and I'm not sure of what to do. There are two parts I am dealing with for what is wrong:
If I click on another form and then on the caption bar of my form again to get focus on my form and try a keystroke, the keystroke detection does not work. However, if I click on another form and then back on my form one more time, the keystroke detection for the form does work. What can I do to make sure that this works each time my from has focus again?
If I click on the web browser component within my own form, the KeyDown code for the form no longer gets enacted. Even if I click on the caption bar for the form, the KeyDown event does not work. What do I need to do to assure that, if a component within my form is clicked, my form will still respond for the KeyDown event?
Thanks in advance for any advice.

I can't say why your caption bar seems to be intercepting key events. It may be that various components on the form can have focus and thus capture keyboard events. I know the web browser control works this way. You may consider capturing keyboard events globally.
I saw something on Codeproject that shows how to do this. I hope this helps.
They use UserActivityHooks.
UserActivityHook actHook;
void MainFormLoad(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
actHook= new UserActivityHook(); // crate an instance
// hang on events
actHook.OnMouseActivity+=new MouseEventHandler(MouseMoved);
actHook.KeyDown+=new KeyEventHandler(MyKeyDown);
actHook.KeyPress+=new KeyPressEventHandler(MyKeyPress);
actHook.KeyUp+=new KeyEventHandler(MyKeyUp);
}
As for the webbrowser control, of course it is going to interecept keyboard events. Users often have to enter text in forms and developers often code javascript on webpages to specifically hook into keyboard events. So the webbrowser control must be able to capture those.

Remove original event behaviour of WinForm Control

I would like to remove the original event behavior of controls within a form (similar to design mode).
So, when the user clicks on the button, i only want to capture that event. I do not want the original button event to be fired. Is this somehow possible?
I am looking for a generic solution. So it should work with any form and any control within the form.
Reason: I wrote a form validation rules designer. It uses reflection to enumerate all form-types in the entry assembly. The user can then select a form type, the designer creates that form, enumerates the controls, and embedds the form in the designer panel.
clicking on a control, opens a formular designer panel, and the user can now create a formular for that control and saves the formular to a DB.
When the form is then opened in the normal "runtime" mode, it loads its validation formulars.

Events are not in fact disabled in the Winforms designer. The designer executes the constructor of the form through Reflection, everything in the InitializeComponent() method executes, including the event subscriptions. Wherever this might cause a problem, the controls check the DesignMode property (prevents a Timer from starting for example) or by custom designers. The form is displayed underneath a transparent layered window on top of which the selection rectangle and drag handles are painted. Which prevents issues with mouse clicks and keyboard focus.
You probably ought to look at this magazine article to get this working for you.

From what I understand from your question, I guess, you can still use the "DesignMode" property for this as well. In your event handling routine, you may want to bypass execution by checking on this property:
if (this.DesignMode) return;
as the first statement in your event handling block of code.

Keydown event when the form is not active

How can I capture the Keydown event of a form that is not active?
I found references to ProcessKeyDown but I couldn't find any help on that.

Please set KeyPreview of the form to true. First select form and press f4 key, it will open property window and their is KeyPreview and set it to true.

Right cilck on the form and cilck properties, then there will be flash button , it is for events for that object. Find thier Keypress event. just doulbe click on the column corresponding to that event. It will create event for keypress.
For the documentation and help, check this link.

Keypress events are only sent to Controls that have input focus. You can use the Control.HasFocus property to determine whether your Control has focus or not. Use the Control.Focus() method to give your control focus.

You can set a low level keyboard hook using SetWindowsHookEx() to listen for key press events.

If what you want to do is trigger some code in your program upon keys being pressed in the operating system regarding of whether the form is active or not then you can use the method described in this article:
Processing Global Mouse and Keyboard Hooks in C#
Here is a simple example of a program using that library to simulate a virtual mouse by pressing the numeric keys on the numpad.
'1'-'4' and '6'-'9' are directional keys, '5' is left click, '0' is double click.
Program.cs
Form1.cs
Observe that i didn't call the Application.Run(); with a new Form1() parameter so that the application would run but will not be visible on screen. To end the program you have to press CTRL+SHIFT+ESC, go to Processes page and end the process manually.

How to tell when the user has clicked outside of the bounds your control?

I have a custom UserControl. I want to use it in a few different products, so I want something that can be implemented inside of the UserControl itself. I want to know when the user has clicked outside of the bounds of the UserControl so that I can hide it, similar to a ComboBox. How can I do that?
I tried handling the click event, but it only seems to fire if the click occured within the bounds of the control.

That's what the Capture property is designed to do. Set it to true and all mouse messages are routed to your control, even if it moves out of the window bounds. Check the e.Location property in the MouseDown event.

Hm, you may be able to accomplish what you want by listening to the GotFocus/LostFocus events. ComboBoxes give the drop downs focus when they open and close them when they lose focus.

do this
Select all controls on your form including form
In Property Window select MouseClick event
Now enter below Code in Common_MouseClick
Code:
if (!sender.Equals(yourControl))
{
yourControl.Visible=false;
}

WPF How to bind the same event handler to two different controls

I have a UI with a search text box and a button that that should be clicked when the user want to preform the search. (like a search engine UI)
I want that the same event handler will be called when the user hit the search button and when the user hit enter in the text box.
I can easily hack it but my guess is that WPF has it's own 'right' way of doing it.
So what is the WPF way of doing it right?
Thanks.

There are different delegates for click and keypressed events.
So extract your code in method
named like 'DoSearch', then connect different (mb anonymous) handlers to events and call DoSearch inside handlers