I have an application where I have several forms. Its a C# windows-form based application build in .NET 4.O. I have several forms where the user enters the data. There are grids where data is displayed and whole lots of controls on the form. Believe me! its a mess of so many controls. I have to setup the TabIndex for each control. I have literally disabled the TabStop property of certain controls I don't want to be tabed into it. However, still once I go through the order I want, I TAB it, and it works but once it reaches the last box then it takes 3-4 times more tabbing to get to the first field. I tried disabling the TabStop property for the controls I don't want. But I think there might be certain controls that I don't see but they might be included in the Tab property.
My question is that is there any way that I can set the TabStop property of all the controls on the winform to false and then set it to true for the controls I want to include only.
I also open to if there is any other way I can implement this?
If further explanation is needed, let me know!
I have attached a picture thats the order I want and then loop back but somehow its not working. Just in addition there is also two panels in the form and I have disabled their TabStop property to False.
Go to View menu and click Tab Order. This will activate the tab-order selection mode on the form. TabIndex value will be displayed as a number on each control.
Click on controls in order you need them to be tabbed. This will set appropriate values for TabIndex of controls.
After you finished, go to View menu and turn-off Tab Order.
Select controls you don't want to be tabbed and set TabStop = false.
One simple explanation is that you lost a control underneath another one that overlaps it. Or it is located beyond the edges of the Form. A good tool to find it back is View + Other Windows + Document Outline.
If that doesn't help then diagnose it by adding a Label and a Timer. Write the Tick event handler like this:
private void timer1_Tick(object sender, EventArgs e) {
if (this.ActiveControl != null) label1.Text = this.ActiveControl.Name;
}
You should try the following code:
foreach (Control ctrl in this.Controls)
ctrl.TabStop = false;
Also you can try to check the last tabindex. Then go to your form.designers.cs and find all controls with a greater tabindex and then remove them : add
ctrlTabStop = false;
I did not test any of this, so be careful : backup your *.designer.cs before.
Related
I am working on a project in which I am using a property grid to display the properties of the selected control.
The Property Grid is fixed to the left edge of the container and in the rest of the space I have the form I am designing.
On clicking a control on the form, the specific control’s property is getting selected.
In the above figure, I have selected the textbox and the textbox’s properties get shown on the propertygrid.
Here if you observe, by default, the Name property is highlighted as well.
Is there some way to unselect this property programmatically?
I have tried some suggestions online but none have helped. I am not able to find find a way to remove all selections from the PropertyGrid, but its behaviour seem to be different form a DataGrid...
Here is why I need this...
On selecting a control, if a property in the property grid is selected, then the property is getting modified.
For example, If i cut the control using Ctrl + X, the selected value in property grid is getting cut which in some cases is forcing user to set the property before modifying anything on the form.
I have tried selecting multiple controls, but in that case alse the selected property seems to be persistent
Since PropertyGrid uses DefaultProperty to select a property in its grid, as an option you can set DefaultProperty attribute at run-time for your object to a non-browsable property, for example:
this.propertyGrid1.SelectedObject = null;
TypeDescriptor.AddAttributes(someControl,
new Attribute[] { new DefaultPropertyAttribute("Site") });
this.propertyGrid1.SelectedObject = someControl;
Well, what you are trying are hacks. It is never a good idea to do such hacks particularly if you are not the only person that use the software.
In your case, the focus should be on the designer while you interact with it. So if the user press Ctrl+X, the designer should respond to the keyboard and it should not have any effect on the property grid (as only one control can have the focus at the same time).
Thus it is up to you to make sure that your designer is focusable, that it has the focus when initially displayed, that it get the focus when you press the TAB key. Pressing the TAB key again should put the focus on the property grid so that user can interact with the grid without using the keyboard.
If you have more than these 2 controls, then obviously TAB should also stop at any appropriate controls. Also, it can be a good idea to have some direct shortcuts like F4 to (show and) activate the properties pane.
If you are not able to make it works, then the best compromise would be to use another windows for the properties grid. By using a distinct Tool windows for the properties, it should not respond to the keyboard when the main windows has the focus.
Here are some links that might help you:
Panel not getting focus
Control.Focus Method() — See Remarks section.
In any case, you should not prevent Ctrl+X to works as expected when the property grid has the focus and a property is selected. Users don't like software that do not follows UI conventions.
As a software developer, you should as much as possible ensure that your application follows standard behaviors. I recommend you that you take one or 2 extra days developing your software properly instead of doing hacks.
Often, compromise to gain a few days will never be fix and will be a pain for many years. Better to do it right from the start. Unselecting an item in the property grid is not an acceptable workaround. Your manager should not allows you to do that.
I have a Form with many TextBoxes. I need some TextBoxes inside one group, and other text boxes inside another group. By group, I just need a way to make these TextBoxes appear to belong with each other.
I made two Panels and added the TextBoxes to them. Then, I placed a border around these Panels.
However, my problem is that when I press Tab, the focus doesn't go to the next TextBox, but rather it goes in a random order to another TextBox. Sometimes the next TextBox is inside the first Panel, other times it is in the second Panel. How can I control the focus order?
This is an image to illustrate my point:
Tab order should be set like this. Both top container panel should have TabIndex 0 and 1 respectively and its child control should have TabIndex prefix by their parent control Tab Index. ie. if the Panel1 has TabIndex 0 then its child controls should have TabIndex 0.0,0.1,0.2,0.3...
NOTE: make sure that if the Tab Stop property of any control is set to false then cursor will not move into that control. In that case TabIndex will not work.
As others have said, use the TabIndex property to indicate the tabbing order, and the TabStop property to determine whether or not the control can be tabbed to at all.
However, there is a much simpler way to do this from the designer. When looking at your form in the designer, make sure your form is selected (and not a control on the form) (you can do this by clicking once in the whitespace around the form), and then choose View -> Tab Order.
With the tab order designer active, you will see the TabIndexes of every control. Click them in the order you would like to be able to tab through them. The TabIndex tooltips will change from blue to white as you assign them. When you are done, choose View -> Tab Order again to return to the normal designer state.
Another thing to mention would be to suggest using UserControls whenever possible. If you reuse parts of your UI with good design of UserControls, you can avoid having a form with dozens and dozens of tab stops to assign, since each UserControl will have its own internal tabbing order that will automatically apply when placed on a Form, and you will only have to set the TabIndex of the UserControl itself.
When you select a textbox on your designer, you should see a property for the textbox called the TabIndex. When tabbing through controls, focus goes to the component with the next highest TabIndex.
You'll want to set the TabIndex for each of the boxes so that tabbing rotates through the boxes in the order that you expect.
From MSDN - Control.TabIndex:
A tab index can consist of any valid integer greater than or equal to
zero, lower numbers being earlier in the tab order. If more than one
control on the same parent control has the same tab index, the z-order
of the controls determines the order to cycle through the controls.
For a control to be included in the tab order, its TabStop property
must be set to true.
Accordingly,
textbox1.TabIndex = 1; // and do the same for each one in the desired order
textbox1.TabStop = true;
You need to set the TabIndex property of the TextBox Controls.
From MSDN : Control.TabIndex
Gets or sets the tab order of the control within its container.
For a control to be included in the tab order, its TabStop property
must be set to true.
Try This: (Example)
txtTextBox1.TabIndex = 1;
txtTextBox2.TabIndex = 2;
txtTextBox3.TabIndex = 3;
in the above example Tab Focus order is as below:
txtTextBox1
txtTextBox2
txtTextBox3
Note: You need to make sure that TabStop property of the textbox controls are set to True otherwise tab ordering does not work,but by default when you are designing controls using Visual Studio IDE(using drag and drop functionality) TabStop property is set to True.
From MSDN : Control.TabStop
Gets or sets a value indicating whether the user can give the focus to this control using the TAB key.
Try This: Setting TabStop property
txtTextBox1.TabIndex = 1;
txtTextBox1.TabStop = True;
txtTextBox2.TabIndex = 2;
txtTextBox2.TabStop = True;
txtTextBox3.TabIndex = 3;
txtTextBox3.TabStop = True;
I have multiple controls on one form,and when i select some value from combo box(for example 1) next control became enabled, else next control stay disabled.
Problem is that if i just press 1 and tab, after that next control became enabled, but program jump over it just like control are still disabled, and tab control selecting next control.
I need to find way how to tab check is control become enabled and go on this control,and if control are still disabled that go on next enabled control.
Thanx
You created a mousetrap for the user, very hard to escape from. Technically you can handle the keyboard navigation by trapping the Tab key before it can be used to navigate but the user still has an unsolvable problem when he wants to use the mouse to change the focus. He has nothing decent to click on.
You'll need to re-think your UI design. One possible solution is to change the ComboBox's DropDownStyle to DropDownList. Which ought to be pretty appropriate if you use its selected item to enable other controls, there should only be a limited set of valid selections. If that's not what you want then you need to do something drastic. Not necessarily limited to hiding controls instead of disabling them.
This is probably caused by the event of the combo-box you using to control your flow.
The "Changed"/"Value changed" events in most languages fire up after the control has lost focus.
You forgot to add a tag for the UI technology you are using.
If you are using WinForms, then you can try to execute the SelectNextControl method on your control that the user just edited. This will find the 'next' control for you, and activate it.
Lets assume it's winforms (playing with disabled/enabled like this in wpf is.. against mvvm rules).
Firstly, ensure what tab order/index of your controls is ok. To test, if they are all enabled, then pressing Tab should go through them in the right order. This can be seen easily
Next thing is to choose one of many possible solutions, to make 1,Tab to work:
disable Tab key navigation at all;
make controls to pass control (focus) to specific control (making tab order irrelevant);
use SelectNextControl (work best for custom controls, which when will support that tab-flow schema);
prevent focus changing, do all logic, change focus (theoretically).
I have created a Windows form using a Tab Control, but it has a header with it. I want to hide it. I am not able to do it using any properties of the Tab Control. Is there any property defined for hiding the tab header for the Tab Control without going through the code?
Use following code to hide the tabs or set these properties in design.
tabControl.Appearance = TabAppearance.FlatButtons;
tabControl.ItemSize = new Size(0, 1);
tabControl.SizeMode = TabSizeMode.Fixed;
You want the tab panels without the feature allowing a user to switch between them, so I suppose you want to create few separate sets of controls to be shown to the user one at a time. You can achieve this in several ways (you can choose one of them if you find it appropriate in your case):
Use several Panel controls instead of several tabs in the TabControl, however, it would be hard to work in the designer, because all the controls would be visible
Use different Forms instead of tabs to keep the layout parts separated. It can be ok, but you may not want to use multiple Forms, so it depends on a specific case.
and finally, the suggested solution:
Encapsulate each set of controls in a UserControl. This allows you to keep each layout separately, so you can easily design each of them without the other controls getting in the way ;). The the code handling each of the layouts would also be separated. Then just drag those controls in the Form and use set their visibilities appropriately to show the one you want.
If none of those suggestions work for you, let me know, so I can look for other possible solutions.
It's more easy as you think, you just drag the panel's window upper, so will be outside of the form.
Use DrawMode: OwnerDrawFixed will hide TabPage header text DrawMode : OwnerDrawFixed
Another way to achieve the same (or similar) is: You can remove tabs from TabControl.TabPages collection and then add the tab you want to show.
During the Form initialization I remove tabs (so into the designer I can easily manage them) and in some control event (as button click) I show the tab the user has to see.
Something like that:
// During form load:
ctrTab.TabPages.Clear();
// ......
// During button click or some other event:
if(rbSend.Checked)
ctrTab.TabPages.Add(pgSend);
else
ctrTab.TabPages.Add(pgReceive);
In this way the user can still see the header tab but just as title of controls group, he can't change/switch the current active tab.
I've come across the strangest bug pertaining to DataGridViews in Windows Forms.
I have a TabControl, that is supposed to contain a docked DataGridView in each tab page. I thought it would be convenient that the grid is focused upon changing the tab page, so that the user could simply hover the mouse over the grid and start scrolling when he changes the page. So, I just put a grids[tabs.SelectedIndex].Focus() in the event handler for changing the tab page.
However, something really strange happened. In my test application, I have three tab pages. If I try scrolling the grid right after starting the application, it doesn't work; I have to click in the grid first. I was expecting this. However, if I change the tab page, I can't scroll in any of the other grids until I click, except for the first one!
So, if I switch pages to the second page, then back to the first, I can automatically scroll that grid without clicking, but if I then switch to the third, I have to click for the grid to focus.
I had a look at the CanFocus properties of the grids, and it seems that only the first grid has it set to True. They are all created programmatically, and all in the same way. I don't see why they would be different.
Any ideas?
Inactive tab pages have their Visible property set to false. The documentation for CanFocus says:
In order for a control to receive
input focus, the control must have a
handle assigned to it, and the Visible
and Enabled properties must both be
set to true for both the control and
all its parent controls
Well, I solved it. Stupid programming error on my part, I had grids[tabs.TabIndex].Focus() instead of grids[tabs.SelectedIndex].Focus().
Oh well.