I have a C# Forms tab application. Each TabPage has a menu on the left (Outlook style navigation panel), and a Panel on the right for content.
If I want the content panel for tab page 0, how would I go about fetching it? I'm a bit stumped because I don't know how to index into the controls collection on a tab page. The following is underlined in red, so I believe its wrong.
Panel panel = tabControl.TabPages[0].Controls["Panel"];
EDIT: remove Window in Panel sub question. It will be moved to a separate question.
Sorry about the beginner questions. I'm a C/C++ guy with lots of MFC time, and C# UI is a bit frustrating at the moment.
foreach (Control control in tabControl1.TabPages[0].Controls)
{
// if (control.Name == "panel1")
}
You can always call this recursively on control.Controls to find a control in any hierarchy. control.Name can be used to find your specific control.
You can't show a Form, inside a Panel. You could create Custom Control where you can add your functionality and add that control to a Panel.
in order to create a new form for example you need to create a variable of what ever form that it is you want to create.
example
Form2 frm2 = new Form2();
frm2.Show();
if you want to show that form in the panel then the panel would be the Owner keep in mind the difference between Owner and Parent
please paste what ever code you have so far and we can suggest the necessary changes
Finally, how does one display a Window in a Panel? - you don't want to do that. If you want a window and a panel to share a piece of UI functionality, create a user control with all the the functionality and then you can place it in a form or in a panel.
A possibility to encapsulate complex UI content is to create a UserControl. This way you can create a reusable piece of complex UI you can basically add as a "blob" inside a form.
The reason why
Panel panel = tabControl.TabPages[0].Controls["Panel"];
is underlined red is because the Controls collection returns a Control which might be a Panel but also might be something else. So you need to cast it:
Panel panel = tabControl.TabPages[0].Controls["Panel"] as Panel;
if (panel != null)
{
// got a panel here so do something
}
Also: MSDN has some good resources - you should make use of it.
Related
I just started working with Visual Studio C# and to be honest I didn't fully understand what happens when we chose to hide a form or a user control.
My intuition tells me this hide/show method is kind of "inefficient" way to get an user through all the functions of my app.
So I am asking you guys if there is another workaround to "load" user control parts in a form.
Right now my main_menu form has all the user control objects placed on the form, but hidden, and I am using buttons to show them.
Is there a better way to achieve the same result? (I was thinking of a workaround like having an empty panel where I can load the User Control - not sure if possible)
Thank you!
You can create the controls on the fly and add them to or remove them from the Controls collection. On the class level, define this field
private Control _currentPanel;
You can use a more specific type here, if you are deriving all your panels from a common base type.
Then change the panel with
// Remove previous one.
if (_currentPanel != null) {
Controls.Remove(_currentPanel);
}
// Add new one
_currentPanel = new MyNewPanel();
//TODO: possibly set the panels Docking property to Fill here.
Controls.Add(_currentPanel);
In the example I am working with the form's Controls collection; however, you might have to use the Controls collection of some container control holding the panel.
I have a .NET 4.5 WinForm that checks for the existence of a certain file when the form loads. If the condition is met, I display the form in its entirety. If the file doesn't exist, I want to display a simple text message while hiding (setting the Visible property to false) all the other components on the form.
My issue is that the Label I want to display can only be positioned on top of a GroupBox. Well, not only but it is most aesthetically pleasing being in that location. If I set the visibility of the container to false then it hides the message as well.
Is there a way to "break out" the Label from the GroupBox?
Worst comes to worst, I will hide the indivial components within the GroupBox and live with the border that remains. I am just curious if there is a way to do this.
I found a solution using only the designer. ChrisF's answer got me thinking, and the correct method isn't to place the label behind the container, but rather to place the container on top of the label. This seems to be a quirk of the VS designer.
I created a new WinForm and added a label and a groupbox, without the two of them overlapping. Then:
Right-click the label and Send to Back, or alternatively right-click the container and Send to Front
Drag or resize the container to cover the label
And that's it... the label appears behind the container. I guess the designer correctly notes the z-index when both components have the same parent container, and placing the label on top of the groupbox changes its parent container.
To have the label on the form in the position you want, but outside the group box use the "send to back" option to push it behind the group box. It won't be visible at design time, but it will be in the right place.
Then if the file is not found you can make the group box invisible revealing the label behind.
Another alternative is to position the label outside the group box (off to the left or right and outside the form) and then move it into position at the same time as making it visible.
I know you want to benefit the capability of design support to position your label correctly right at design time, however doing so will set the groupbox as Parent of your label, you can't drag and drop that label on your form. So just try the following code to change the Parent from groupbox to the form at runtime and maintain the design location, that way changing your groupbox's visible won't affect the visible of your label:
public Form1(){
InitializeComponent();
Load += (s,e) => {
var loc = label1.PointToScreen(Point.Empty);
label1.Parent = this;
label1.Location = PointToClient(loc);
};
}
I want to load Form's controls to a panel in C# so the panel will show the same components as the form. I have tried this code:
foreach (Control control in (new Form2()).Controls)
{
panels[panelsCounter].Controls.Add(control);
}
But the problem is that when I'm running the program it loads only the type of control that I've added last (For example if I've been added a label and than I've added a button to the form it shows only a button, but if I add another label, it shows both of the labels, but not the button).
Please help me.
This is a classic bug, you are modifying the collection while you are iterating it. The side-effect is that only ever other control will be moved to the panel. You'll need to do this carefully, iterate the collection backwards to avoid the problem:
var formObj = new Form2(); //???
for (int ix = formObj.Controls.Count-1; ix >= 0; --ix) {
panels[panelsCounter].Controls.Add(formObj.Controls[ix]);
}
Controls are not designed to be displayed multiple times. You cannot add controls to multiple forms, or add the same control to a form multiple times. They simply weren't designed to support it.
You could go through each control and create a new control of the same type, and even copy over the values of their properties (or at least what's publicly accessible to you), effectively cloning them, but it's important that it be a different control that you add to the new panel.
Let's just say that I have many controls on my Form, and when a User clicks on one of them, its height will expand. This means that, currently, when this clicked-control expands, other controls below it will become overlapped by the expanded control.
But what I want to happen, is for each Control below the expanded control to slide down, so that they are below the expanded control again.
I know how to handle sliding, but I just don't know how to make every control except for one move everytime a given control is moved.
Any help at all is greatly appreciated, thank you!
This is what I was thinking:
void newOrderReceived(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
foreach(Control OrderNotificationBox in OrdersPanel.Controls)
{
if(OrderNotificationBox is NotificationBox) // Checks to see if the control is a NotificationBox
{
// Add my code to slide controls down.
}
}
}
But... How do I know if the control is below the expanded control?
Is this how I should go about changing the location of all controls below the expanded control?
Edit: Just had a thought, to check to see if a NotificationBox is below the Expanded NotificationBox, see revised code below:
void newOrderReceived(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
foreach(Control OrderNotificationBox in OrdersPanel.Controls)
{
if(OrderNotificationBox is NotificationBox) // Checks to see if the control is a NotificationBox
{
if(OrderNotificationBox.Location.Y <= ExpandedNotificationBox.Location.Y + ExpandedNotificationBox.Size.Width)
{
// Add my code to slide controls down.
}
}
}
}
But would this be sufficient? Currently, this is working, so I guess I just answered my own question. But, isn't there a better way to do this? A more elegant/efficient way?
Here's a sample of how it should look:
FlowLayoutPanel provides you with dynamic layout where you can resize any control in it and all below controls will slide automatically. There are many strategies to using groups/columns of flow layout panels to be able to achieve the desired look for the whole form. Some googling will reveal some of these.
For instance in the form above, resizing the button1 control simply flows all the below controls to further down on the form. You can try that at the design time also. Drop the form a flow layout panel, drop 3-4 control in the container and start experimenting..
For each expandable content use Panel.
Dock your panels one under another (Use panel1.Dock = DockStyle.Top. For the very bottom panel use panel1.Dock = DockStyle.Fill).
Place your child controls inside of each expandable panel, set inner controls' Anchor properties accordingly.
When you expand one panel, the rest of the panels will adjust automatically. You don't need to code for this. You will only change Height of a panel that you currently expand.
What you need is some kind of 'ExplorerBar' functionality. There are several control libraries that offer that, and I found the article here on the CodeProject that has it for free.
In java swing I can insert panels into panels and so on, and not have to build a brand new window for every view of my applicaiton, or mess around removing and adding controls.
Theres a panel clas sin C# however I cant see any way of creating a 'panel form' or basically just a form in form designer thats a panel and its contents.
How do I do this then and work the way I did with java swing?
Usually i just dock different forms within eachother setting the IsMdiContainer Property to true on the parent window. Then i create subforms that i dock using the following function:
static class FormUtil
{
static public void showForm(Form sender, Control reciever)
{
sender.ControlBox = false;
sender.FormBorderStyle = FormBorderStyle.None;
sender.ShowInTaskbar = false;
sender.TopLevel = false;
sender.Visible = true;
sender.Dock = DockStyle.Fill;
reciever.Controls.Clear(); //clear panel first
reciever.Controls.Add(sender);
}
}
then whenever i need to dock a form inside a panel on the parents form i just do:
FormUtil.showForm(new SomeForm(), this.splitContainer1.Panel1);
This allows me to delegate some of the form creation to different designers. Works like a charm for me, love to hear if theres a better way of doing it.
Actually, you can use the panel control and set it's Dock property to Fill. That way, your panel will be the entire canvas of the form. Then, you can add child panels as needed either through code behind or through forms designer.
There's the concept of user controls which basicly provides you with a panel like designer surface , not to mention that you can create atomic forms (which can be reused) and register them as inheritable, that way you can provide inheritance too.