Develop Reference

Metro UI C#: How do you make a form within a form?

I want to know how to open different forms with a single main parent form in Metro Framework UI similar to a Modern POS System. As far as I know, I haven't found anything remotely close to that in the internet and I'm also having trouble trying to figure it out in Metro. Also I'm not talking about MDI Forms
Here's an example: (not in Metro)
Modern POS Design (watch first few seconds of the vid)
I'm talking about a dashboard type of UI where you open different modules using buttons on the left side of the Main form and the modules are opened as a child form in the Main form.

It has so many bugs when it comes to that kind of procedure. You can just use a simple form rather that MetroForm because MetroForm creates a somewhat black form on your screen when calling as child form. I don't know if it just in my application but it is really annoying.
You can just add your other forms to a panel at your main form.
There are many tutorials on how to do this but i will give you an example.
I created a method something like this in my utilclass:
public static Form NewForm(Form myForm, Panel myPanel)
{
myForm.TopLevel = false;
myForm.AutoScroll = true;
myForm.Dock = DockStyle.Fill;
myPanel.Controls.Clear();
myPanel.Controls.Add(myForm);
myForm.Show();
return myForm;
}
then calling from Main form to a panel:
Form2 myForm2 = new Form2();
UtilClass.NewForm(myForm2 , [YourMainFormPanel]);
I know this code is not the best approach but I'm just giving you ideas.

WPF Desktop application MDI like/Parent-Child

I'm creating an WPF desktop application.
Desc : One main window(Parent) for whole application which includes display, completely docked display.
"X" no. of child windows, whenever whichever child is opened, On minimizing of this child, the child should get minimized on the parent window [Currently, it goes behind the main window]
WHAT I NEED : Whenever child is minimized it should not go behind, it should be minimized on parent window.
Note : I cannot use wpf.mdi.dll, since I have a data display on my main screen(Parent window, Display will be completely docked)

Perhaps you can use AvalonDock(free) or Telerik Docking(not free).

After setting
Owner = this;
ShowIntaskbar=false;
The thing worked for me

How to Embed a Form within another Form in c#?

In an internet webpage , there is a constant menu usually placed on the top or left of a page from which user can navigate (They call it Iframes) ..
I would like to know if it is possible to do something like that using WinForm applications or WPF applications in c# .
At present I am simply inheriting forms from a base class . and each time the user needs to navigate , I have no option but to open up a new form with the same Peristent menu ...
Any suggestions here ?

I managed to use usercontrol to embed a form into another ..
Form1 has a userControl , Form2 embedded inside the user control .
things to note was ..
the embedded forms toplevel property should be set to false
the embedded forms FormBorderStyle should be set to none
userControl1.Controls.Clear();
Form2 f = new Form2();
f.Toplevel=flase;
f.Show();
f.TopLevel = false;
userControl1.Controls.Add(f);

You could use an MDI-container in WinForms.
see here and here for more information.

You mean like an MDI application (http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/myBestMDI.aspx) or just using a SplitContainer on the form? Really there are many options. WPF has ElementHost I think. Did you do any research yet? What did you find?
You could also take the toolbox approach. Have a parent program start the menu form and then other forms can use it... or it can launch from it... what ever your use case is.

Well, there should be a frame component in WPF which will give you such an option. Then you would use a "view" concept to open the WPF Pages you direct the user to.

WPF OpenFileDialog with Win32 parent window; window is not regaining focus when closed

I have a c++ windows app calling into a c++/cli library, which is calling into a managed library. The managed library is calling OpenFileDialog.Show with a WPF window parent which is owned by the Win32 window. I haven't found a better way to do this, and all the resources I've read here and searching google and social.msdn recommend doing what I'm doing.
The dialog opens just fine, but when I hit the cancel button, for instance, the app loses focus completely. I'm not sure why it's happening, but I can't seem to make it stop. I've tried a number of different things to no avail.
If I just launch the OpenFileDialog without creating a WPF Window, I don't see the problem.
If I don't set the owner of the WPF Window, I don't see the problem. If I call OpenFileDialog.Show and don't pass the parent, but still create the WPF Window and set its owner, I still see the problem.
I am able to hack it to set the parent app window to foreground after it loses focus, but I would like to not have to.
I have uploaded a small example solution for my scenario that illustrates the problem:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/26054523/MixedExample.zip
Any help would be appreciated.

Have you tried inverting the hosting scenario? Right now it sounds like you're going unmanaged->bridge->managed->WPF->Winforms. Maybe you could go ...managed->WinForms->WPF using ElementHost http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms742215.aspx
In that way, the WPF window would just be a child control of the WinForms app and that might work out better for focus switches. WinForms controls are not really meant to work directly with WPF apps so well, two different UI threading setups are being used as you've noted.

I know that this is an old post but I think that this is a common problem and I have a good answer. If you have a Win32 window parent window called ParentWindow and a WPF child window called WPFChild you can do this:
using System.Windows.Interop;
void OpenWindow()
{
WPFChildWindow WPFChild = new WPFChildWindow();
WindowInteropHelper helper = new WindowInteropHelper(WPFChild)
{
Owner = new NativeWindowWrapper(ParentWindow.Hwnd).Handle
};
bool? ret = _stepsForm.ShowDialog();
}
This will cause the child window to remain on top of the parent and function as a dialog. Keep in mind that the WPF window does not return a DialogResult but rather a nullable bool.
NativeWindow wrapper is a simple class that takes casts an int as an IntPtr. It's actually from a .net Excel ref edit project located here: How to code a .NET RefEdit ControlT

.NET MDI child form suppress/hide caption/icon area

I have a subform (child) that I want to use in a number of parents. I'm not a professional developer (I'm an architect - I know, you can save all the jokes... :) - working solo at present). I've ended up using an MDI form with the subform as a child. I maximize the subform form and most things are fine except that although I've tried to disable all the various widgets (the subform in the designer shows NO caption/icon/button area), I get TWO icons on the left and TWO sets of buttons on the right - of which ONLY the restore button works. Either of the sets of buttons will work the one child form.
Is there any way around this? I want the subform to be "transparent" the the user - they shouldn't be aware there's a subform in use.
I've done a quick search and I'd already suppressed the actual caption as mentioned in another answer - to get the caption bar suppressed in the designer...
Is MDI the right technology, or is there a better way to have the same subform appear in multiple parent forms?
VS2008, C#, Windows 7
TIA,
Paolo

There's a WF bug that will double the glyphs if you create the MDI child form in the parent's constructor. Here's an example:
public partial class Form1 : Form {
public Form1() {
InitializeComponent();
this.IsMdiContainer = true;
var child = new Form();
child.MdiParent = this;
child.WindowState = FormWindowState.Maximized;
child.Show();
}
}
Move the child form creation code to the Load event to avoid this.