WinForms: I don't want any tab order. I want myself be able to programatically handle all the tab orders on the form with some logic that I need.
How can I completely disable tab order? I assume after that I should deal with KeyDown event of each contorl or some similar event ....
You need to override the form's ProcessCmdKey() method. Test keydata == Keys.Tab and (Keys.Shift | Keys.Tab) to detect respectively a forward and a backward tab. Return true to indicate that you've used the key and it shouldn't be used anymore. Which defeats Winforms default handling for the Tab key. No additional changes are needed to the controls.
The form's ActiveControl property tells you which control currently has the focus, you'll need to use it to figure out which control should be focused next. Beware that it can technically be null. Watch out for controls that are embedded in a container control, like a Panel or UserControl. Making this work is definitely unpleasant, also very hard to maintain. Only do this if there are a limited number of controls on the form.
As Adrian said by setting tab stop to false you can disable it
a Function like this can be usefull to diable all tabstop
private void DiableTabStop(Control ctrl)
{
ctrl.TabStop = false;
foreach (Control item in ctrl.Controls)
{
DiableTabStop(item);
}
}
and calling it at form load
DiableTabStop(this);
One approach is to set the TabStop property of every control in the form to false. This will prevent the tab key from giving the controls focus.
If you don't want to do this manually for every control (e.g. in the design view), you can create a method that will iterate over all of the controls in the form's Controls collection and set the property on each one, then call it from your form's constructor.
In addition to disabling the tab stops for the pageframe, as you mentioned, YOU want to control which "tab" is active. You can have a custom property on your form of "WhichTab" should be shown. Then, override the click event and check if the incoming sender/eventarg page is that of another page... no matter what, force focus back to the "WhichTab" YOU are in control of setting... When ready to activate said page, tell the tab control object to ACTIVATE the new page to get displayed to the user.
Related
In a Windows Forms application, when do I write the code to set the focus to a control both while the application is launched and subsequently after I call a function?
For instance, if I have a DropDownList, a TextBox and four buttons and I want the Focus to be set to the DropDownList, where do I write my code?
To set the focus to a particular control on application launch, I can set the tab index to that DropDown (with a minimum value, under the assumption TabStop property is set to True).
Now, if the user completes an operation (say, any of the Click Button Events) and then I update the DropDown and after that if I want to set the focus...I can do it as
MyDropDownList.Focus()
QUESTION
NB: The question is more about where, not how?
By far the simplest solution is to set the TabIndex property correctly so that your 'MyDropDownList' control has the lowest index. The next approach is to do it in the constructor. But you have to use Select(), the Focus() method cannot work yet because the control doesn't become visible until later.
Public Sub New()
InitializeComponent()
MyDropDownList.Select()
End Sub
Works in the Load event as well. Focus() starts working in the Shown event.
When the parent window is activated (that is, when it receives the "Activated" event), set the focus to the child control where you want the focus located.
private void Form_AddAppID_Activated(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
textID.Focus();
}
Note that the tab order has nothing to do with where the focus starts. Instead, the tab order is used to decide how the focus gets transferred when the user hits the tab key.
I have a problem .. I have an error list form (works as validation summary screen) that displays validation of controls that require to save data but have no values.
This form opened when validation occurs on controls in another form that has tab control contains all controls that have validation.
The problem is when I double click on Error List form, I need cursor focus on tab control that have this control and focus on the control itself
The result : focus happened on tab control only .. but I need to focus on the control also
Use Control.Focus() in your tab selected event handler.
Call Focus() to focus on the next control.
Step 1 : You need to handle the Enter event of the TabPage Control to perform the operations when TabPage gains the focus.
Step 2: You can call Select() function on Required control to gain the Focus.
Try This: if you want to gain the Focus of TextBox control in TabPage2 use this code
tabPage2.Enter += new System.EventHandler(this.tabPage2_Enter);
private void tabPage2_Enter(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
textBox1.Select();
}
I think the trick is to set socus on the tab page first, then set focus on the actual control you want to focus on.
What I was seeing is if the tab page was already selected setting focus to the control works fine. However, if the tab was programmatically activated then setting focus on the control alone does not work.
So this works for me reliably:
// first select and focus the tab
TabsResult.SelectedTab = tabRequest;
TabsResult.SelectedTab.Focus();
// then focus the control
txtRequestUrl.Focus();
I currently have a tabcontrol with 3 tabpages (lets call them A,B, and C) the thing is I want the user to only be able to click certian tabs (if on tabA only can navigate to tabB, if on tabC only can navigate to tabA...) is there a way to do this? I'm a bit stumped, any help is appreciated thanks!
--C#2.0
--Windows Visual Studio 2005
You could hook up to the Selecting event on the TabControl and inside the event handler, you could check some class variable specifying which tab(s) are allowed to be clicked. If the one you're selecting doesn't match the variable, you can cancel the event.
In order to control which TabPages you can navigate to at a time, you can use the Enabled property on the TabPage. Set it to false in order to prevent any user from being able to interact with it.
In order to dynamically decide which tabs are enabled based on what tab is open you can use the Selected event on the TabControl (detailed here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.tabcontrol.selected.aspx). This will fire whenever you change the current tab on the TabControl. In here, you can determine what the current TabPage is and then use that to enable or disable TabPages as appropriate.
Add a handler to the TabControl.Selecting event to check whether you want to allow the tabpage selection.
Maybe something like
If (SelectedIndex == 1) //tab a
{
tabC.enabled = false;
tabB.enabled = true;
}
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.
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;
}