Develop Reference

Focus in parent even if click on child element

I have a UserControl (let's call it "PresentationCell") which contains a label, and an PictureBox.
In another control, which is using this PresentationCell, I have added an event
presentationCell.GotFocus += OnFocus;
private void OnFocus(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
if (sender is PresentationCell current)
current.BackColor = Color.Azure;
}
This will not be fired, if I click / focus on the Label or PictureBox that is within the PresentationCell.
How can I make it fire, when just something within the PresentationCell is in focus?

The problem here is, that the Label and PictureBox controls aren't selectable controls, so they aren't able to receive focus from mouse clicks.
What you could to instead, is to handle the mouse click event and check if you have hit the PresentationCell. If the PresentationCell is hit you can programatically set the focus like so:
hitPresentationCell.Focus();
This will then fire the GotFocus event.
In your OnFocus method you will have to switch the focus to another control or the event will fire endlessly.

Disabling child control events

The child controls of my custom control are obstruction the mouse events in my custom control. I have worked through the accepted answer and the answer at the bottom of this thread...
exposing-events-of-underlying-control
I haven't gotten them to work (the answer at the bottom seemed most straight forward to me). But really I would like to disable the events of them altogether. I have a pictureBox and a label, I don't need to interact with either of the child controls. Is there a way to disable them so they wont interfere with the events of my custom control?
Edit:
I'm using the custom control to gather and process a number of things and make them available as properties. When I click on it, I need to access to the properties. When the event happens at the child control, I don't have access to the propertied of my custom control. The following code is in my form...
public void Form1_MouseDown(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
{
var myControl = sender as SubstanceViewer;
richTextBox1.Text = myControl.substanceInfo;
}
so I will need to access the properties of the parent control.

If you need the the events that are normally trapped by the child controls to be handled by the custom control itself, then simply wire up those events at run-time in the constructor of the custom control.
For example if you needed the MouseMove() event of the PictureBox and Label to fire the already wired up event of the UserControl:
public partial class SomeUserControl : UserControl
{
public SomeUserControl()
{
InitializeComponent();
this.pictureBox1.MouseMove += SomeUserControl_MouseMove;
this.label1.MouseMove += SomeUserControl_MouseMove;
}
private void SomeUserControl_MouseMove(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
{
}
}
Be aware, though, that since different controls are firing the same handler you'll need to take that into account. For example, the e.X and e.Y values in the handler above would be relative to the source control.
*You can also wire these events up at design-time using the IDE itself, but I thought code better illustrated the solution.

MouseLeave not fired C# WinForms

I have a user control with 2 buttons, that should only be visible when the mouse is inside the area of the control.
I'm showing the buttons like this:
private void Node_MouseEnter(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
btn1.Show();
btn2.Show();
}
And hiding like this:
protected override void OnMouseLeave(EventArgs e)
{
if (this.ClientRectangle.Contains(this.PointToClient(Control.MousePosition)))
return;
else base.OnMouseLeave(e);
}
private void Node_MouseLeave(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
btn1.Hide();
btn2.Hide();
}
The problem is that sometimes (random situations) the MouseLeave event is not fired, and the buttons stay visible, even with the mouse outside the control.
Is it possible that multiple events get in conflict ?

As this link states:
Mouse move messages are not accurate enough, they don't guarantee that every traversed pixel is reported. When you have a child window close to the edge of its parent, it is quite easy to not get the MouseEnter for the parent when you move the mouse fast enough.
So, the solution was to listen only for the MouseEnterevent, and when this event is fired, i send a notification to the other controls, to hide its buttons.
Is not the most elegant solution, but it works as expected.

Is there any way to detect a mouseclick outside a user control?

I'm creating a custom dropdown box, and I want to register when the mouse is clicked outside the dropdown box, in order to hide it. Is it possible to detect a click outside a control? or should I make some mechanism on the containing form and check for mouseclick when any dropdownbox is open?

So I finally understand that you only want it to close when the user clicks outside of it. In that case, the Leave event should work just fine... For some reason, I got the impression you wanted it to close whenever they moved the mouse outside of your custom dropdown. The Leave event is raised whenever your control loses the focus, and if the user clicks on something else, it will certainly lose focus as the thing they clicked on gains the focus.
The documentation also says that this event cascades up and down the control chain as necessary:
The Enter and Leave events are hierarchical and will cascade up and down the parent chain until the appropriate control is reached. For example, assume you have a Form with two GroupBox controls, and each GroupBox control has one TextBox control. When the caret is moved from one TextBox to the other, the Leave event is raised for the TextBox and GroupBox, and the Enter event is raised for the other GroupBox and TextBox.
Overriding your UserControl's OnLeave method is the best way to handle this:
protected override void OnLeave(EventArgs e)
{
// Call the base class
base.OnLeave(e);
// When this control loses the focus, close it
this.Hide();
}
And then for testing purposes, I created a form that shows the drop-down UserControl on command:
public partial class Form1 : Form
{
private UserControl1 customDropDown;
public Form1()
{
InitializeComponent();
// Create the user control
customDropDown = new UserControl1();
// Add it to the form's Controls collection
Controls.Add(customDropDown);
customDropDown.Hide();
}
private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
// Display the user control
customDropDown.Show();
customDropDown.BringToFront(); // display in front of other controls
customDropDown.Select(); // make sure it gets the focus
}
}
Everything works perfectly with the above code, except for one thing: if the user clicks on a blank area of the form, the UserControl doesn't close. Hmm, why not? Well, because the form itself doesn't want the focus. Only controls can get the focus, and we didn't click on a control. And because nothing else stole the focus, the Leave event never got raised, meaning that the UserControl didn't know it was supposed to close itself.
If you need the UserControl to close itself when the user clicks on a blank area in the form, you need some special case handling for that. Since you say that you're only concerned about clicks, you can just handle the Click event for the form, and set the focus to a different control:
protected override void OnClick(EventArgs e)
{
// Call the base class
base.OnClick(e);
// See if our custom drop-down is visible
if (customDropDown.Visible)
{
// Set the focus to a different control on the form,
// which will force the drop-down to close
this.SelectNextControl(customDropDown, true, true, true, true);
}
}
Yes, this last part feels like a hack. The better solution, as others have mentioned, is to use the SetCapture function to instruct Windows to capture the mouse over your UserControl's window. The control's Capture property provides an even simpler way to do the same thing.

Technically, you'll need to p/invoke SetCapture() in order to receive click events that happen outside of your control.
But in your case, handling the Leave event, as #Martin suggests, should be sufficient.
EDIT: While looking for an usage example for SetCapture(), I came across the Control.Capture property, of which I was not aware. Using that property means you won't have to p/invoke anything, which is always a good thing in my book.
So, you'll have to set Capture to true when showing the dropdown, then determine if the mouse pointer lies inside the control in your click event handler and, if it doesn't, set Capture to false and close the dropdown.
UPDATE:
You can also use the Control.Focused property to determine if the control has got or lost focus when using a keyboard or mouse instead of using the Capture with the same example provided in the MSDN Capture page.

Handle the Form's MouseDown event, or override the Form's OnMouseDown
method:
enter code here
And then:
protected override void OnMouseDown(MouseEventArgs e)
{
if (!theListBox.Bounds.Contains(e.Location))
{
theListBox.Visible = false;
}
}
The Contains method old System.Drawing.Rectangle can be used to indicate if
a point is contained inside a rectangle. The Bounds property of a Control is
the outer Rectangle defined by the edges of the Control. The Location
property of the MouseEventArgs is the Point relative to the Control which
received the MouseDown event. The Bounds property of a Control in a Form is
relative to the Form.

You are probably looking for the leave event:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.control.leave.aspx
Leave occurs when the input focus leaves the control.

I just wanted to share this. It is probably not a good way of doing it that way, but looks like it works for drop down panel that closes on fake "MouseLeave", I tried to hide it on Panel MouseLeave but it does not work because moving from panel to button leaves the panel because the button is not the panel itself. Probably there is better way of doing this but I am sharing this because I used about 7 hours figuring out how to get it to work. Thanks to #FTheGodfather
But it works only if the mouse moves on the form. If there is a panel this will not work.
private void click_to_show_Panel_button_MouseDown(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
{
item_panel1.Visible = true; //Menu Panel
}
private void Form1_MouseMove(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
{
if (!item_panel1.Bounds.Contains(e.Location))
{
item_panel1.Visible = false; // Menu panel
}
}

I've done this myself, and this is how I did it.
When the drop down is opened, register a click event on the control's parent form:
this.Form.Click += new EventHandler(CloseDropDown);
But this only takes you half the way. You probably want your drop down to close also when the current window gets deactivated. The most reliable way of detecting this has for me been through a timer that checks which window is currently active:
[System.Runtime.InteropServices.DllImport("user32.dll")]
static extern IntPtr GetForegroundWindow();
and
var timer = new Timer();
timer.Interval = 100;
timer.Tick += (sender, args) =>
{
IntPtr f = GetForegroundWindow();
if (this.Form == null || f != this.Form.Handle)
{
CloseDropDown();
}
};
You should of course only let the timer run when the drop down is visible. Also, there's probably a few other events on the parent form you'd want to register when the drop down is opened:
this.Form.LocationChanged += new EventHandler(CloseDropDown);
this.Form.SizeChanged += new EventHandler(CloseDropDown);
Just don't forget to unregister all these events in the CloseDropDown method :)
EDIT:
I forgot, you should also register the Leave event on you control to see if another control gets activated/clicked:
this.Leave += new EventHandler(CloseDropDown);
I think I've got it now, this should cover all bases. Let me know if I'm missing something.

If you have Form, you can simply use Deactivate event just like this :
protected override void OnDeactivate(EventArgs e)
{
this.Dispose();
}

WPF create a list of controls that can be scrolled via the mouse but still remain functional

I have a list of controls that I am displaying via a WrapPanel and it horizontally oriented.
I have implemented a "Click and Drag" scrolling technique so that the user scrolls with the mouse via clicking and dragging.
Like so:
<Canvas x:Name="ParentCanvas" PreviewMouseDown="Canvas_MouseDown" MouseMove="Canvas_MouseMove">
<WrapPanel>
<WrapPanel.RenderTransform>
<TranslateTransform />
</WrapPanel.RenderTransform>
<!-- controls are all in here ... -->
</WrapPanel>
</Canvas>
Then in the code behind:
private Point _mousePosition;
private Point _lastMousePosition;
private void Canvas_MouseDown(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e)
{
_lastMousePosition = e.GetPosition(ParentCanvas);
e.Handled = true;
}
private void Canvas_MouseMove(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
{
_mousePosition = e.GetPosition(ParentCanvas);
var delta = _mousePosition - _lastMousePosition;
if(e.LeftButton == MouseButtonState.Pressed && delta.X != 0)
{
var transform = ((TranslateTransform)_wrapPanel.RenderTransform).Clone();
transform.X += delta.X;
_wrapPanel.RenderTransform = transform;
_lastMousePosition = _mousePosition;
}
}
This all works fine
But what I want to do is make it so that when a users clicks to drag, the items within the WrapPanel dont respond (i.e. the user is only browsing), but when the user clicks (as in a full click) then they do respond to the click.
Just like how the iphone works, when you press and drag directly on an app, it does not open the app, but rather scrolls the screen, but when you tap the app, it starts...
I hope this makes sense.
Cheers,
Mark

I believe you'll need to capture the mouse. The problem is you'll be contending with the controls (such as Button) that will also be trying to capture the mouse.
In your MouseDown event (probably PreviewMouseDown actually) you can use e.MouseDevice.Capture(_wrapPanel, CaptureMode.Element). This should direct all mouse input to the _wrapPanel and not any subtree elements.
In your MouseUp event, you'll need to release the capture by calling e.Mousedevice.Capture(null). If no scrolling has taken place you'll want to send a "click" to the control that normally would have received the click which I'm not quite sure about. Perhaps you can use the Automation Peer classes to do this?
The trick is that certain controls will not work properly if you withhold mouse events from them. Consider a slider for example. How would the slider ever be usable inside a panel that works like this?

Another, and in my opinion better, solution is to:
Add a PreviewMouseDown handler in which you set Handled=true and record the parameters including the position and set a "maybeClick" flag (unless your "recursion" flag is set), and sets a timer.
Add a MouseMove handler that clears the "maybeClick" flag if the mouse moves more than an epsilon away from the position recorded for the PreviewMouseDown.
Add a PreviewMouseUp handler that checks the "maybeClick" flag - if true, it sets the "recursion" flag, does an InputManager.ProcessInput to re-raise the original PreviewMouseDown, and then clears the "recursion" flag.
In the timer, do the same thing as for PreviewMouseUp so the click will only be delayed a moment.
The net effect is to delay a PreviewMouseDown event until you have had time to check whether the mouse moved or not.
Some things to note about this solution:
Setting Handled=true on PreviewMouseDownEvent also stops the MouseDownEvent.
The recursive call is ignored in the PreviewMouseDown handler because the recursion flag is set