I'm creating an application that has to handle the construction cases of a small company. In order for the employees to create a new case, I want to put them through a step-by-step process. How do i setup up such a process?
I've tried putting them on panels instead, but this still seams like a not so elegant way to solve this problem.
Right now i'm hiding/showing lots of textboxes and listboxes individually. Is there some smarter(more correct) way to group these. Or could someone suggest another approach to this? I'm building it in c#.
The best way i have used in this scenario is to create all your Buttons, Textboxes, etc for one step in a UserControl and do the same for each step and better embed all your code specific to that step in that control itself.
On Form only keep those controls which are Universal for every Steps. Then have a container control like a Panel on the form as a Placeholder (so that you don't have to worry about positioning ..however you can even in code set the Location of the Control on Form and directly Add it to Form's Controls Collection)
Then on first step create a new instance of UserCotrol for Fisrt Step and add the first UserControl to the Forms Control Collection or that Container Control (Panel) and on next step Remove it and Replace it with Next UserControl.
This way you wont have all controls in the Memory all the Time and they will be created when required and Disposed when not required. Its Efficient and also isolate each step so you have manageable code for each step.
What about creating a Wizard for it? Hope the following links also helps you.
What is the best way to create a wizard in C# 2.0?
Creating Wizards for Windows Forms in C#
Creating Wizards for Win Forms in C#
Related
My goal is to make an application where, conceptually, everything happens in a single window - a principle most applications I commonly use exhibit, at least for their main interface. Installers are a good example of what I am trying to do, where you basically page through the interface.
You can do this fairly well using a (invisible) tabcontrol. This allows you to design the individual tabpages (which are basically forms as far as controls go) in the designer, and you can manually switch between tabpages, and it all takes place inside the same outer form.
The problem is, this results in code for everything all in the main form. What I want is basically the design capabilities of separate forms (drag-and-drop components, only has code for its own controls), but that can be put inside the tabcontrol to get the intended user interface.
What is the best way to do this? I assume there is a clean solution given how common this is.
Thus far I have followed C# Multiple Screen View Single Form, which works well aside from the fact that all the code ends up in the same class (for example, you need unique names for every single element on the form).
I think you're looking for UserControls. They let you create a "form without a window" if I had to simplify it.
Once you've built the UserControl, you can then drag and drop it into any Form.
You can then replace these controls at runtime as needed.
See this link for a decent starting tutorial. I'll update if I find a better tutorial out there.
http://www.akadia.com/services/dotnet_user_controls.html
ı have been serching this for a while but I couldn't come up with a conclusion. What is UserControl? For me we can do everything with creating new windows forms instead of User Control. I know there is a reason to use but it is not clear right now. If someone illuminates the mystery that would be great.
A user control is basically a grouping of other existing control, intended as a reusable component (i.e. composite control). If you need to place the same group of controls on different windows you'd rather group them in a user control, adding things like data validation for instance, and then reuse this control whenever you need it.
Here is some more reading.
UserControls allow you to reuse your code. For example if you need a small component that displays two values (code and description), with UserControls you can design it only one time and then reuse it in other forms.
Also, you can add your custom properties\methods to the UserControl; in this way you can define simple (or even more complex) functions associated to the GUI control.
Hope this helps.
imagine you have a GridView with some new methods you create, and which you want to use on several pages. There you go. A UserControl is useful. That's just one example
As the others have explained a UserControl groups 'real' Controls and the logic that makes them work together as one component.
Imagine an application where the user can decide wether it runs in MDI mode or with separate windows or with tabbed pages. You can add the UCs of your application to any of these easily.
Think of a MP3 player with various controls, buttons, labels and sliders and user drawn-gauges. If it's in a UC you can re-use it directly. If it is all on a window, how do you re-use it?
So UCs are about flexibilty and re-using visual components.
I am writing a program that has like 8 tabs in one form. Each tab does different functionality so as you know it requires a lot of methods/variables/classes/background workers etc..
I used to write similar programs before but the MainForm.cs file had a lot of code and it made it very messy( a lot of controls, on click events, etc..)
What is the best way to organize the code in such case?
Are there any documents or examples to follow?
Please let me know!
If everything HAS to be in one class, I'd try partial classes out. You can make a new .cs file for every tab and add it to your project, but everything will still be in the same class.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/wa80x488.aspx
Create user controls for each tab page and place all control in their separate user control for each page. Thus, your code will be separated in their usercontrol. You can also invoke their method and handles it's events from your main form.
The best solution I've found is MDI Child Forms. Each tab can be created as a separate form then added during initialization. I also believe you can drop these into a tab form, see here.
Good luck!
My C# standard windows forms app is finished, it has 10 forms. But the new requirement is now to change the "multiple forms" to one dashboard where you click a link on a bar on the side or top and switch between forms in the main area of the dashboard one at a time, pretty much exactly the same way an old HTML frame works with framesets (just imagine my Windows Forms are framesets).
Without going into much detail, each of these forms are pretty involved, multiple threads and so on, and I am looking for a simple trick to display them, as oposed to recoding the entire thing.
I looked at http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/37397/A-Multipanel-Control-in-C
but it's not what I want.
Is there a way to do this?
If you convert the forms into custom controls, it then becomes pretty simple to use the TabControl http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.tabcontrol.aspx to display the custom controls on the surfaces of the Tabs it contains.
By making them custom controls you avoid the mixing of the code for each of them (they remain distinct) but they also become easily added to other surfaces. I do this with a UI with a dozen display tabs.
I would recommend that you either use a tabbed control, or use an MDI Container, or a combination of both. The MDI has some nice behaviors that you'll get for free by implementing it. You could hard code each tab to each form, or have a dropdown that selects each view. If you want to manage the lifecycle of each form, you could implement a singleton pattern on each, or use IOC.
Not entirely sure this is going to solve your problem, but if you have questions or more details, let me know.
I resolved this using MDI as suggested above, works great in .NET Windows Forms 4.0 and 4.5.1.
In the parent form:
Declare a new child form.
myNewChildForm.MdiParent = this;
set child form StartPosition to Manual.
set child form Location to 0,0.
set child form WindowState to Maximized.
set child form Dock to Dockstyle.Fill
That does the trick.
Thank you all.
I am working on my final year project, in my project i am using winform c#. My project is some sort of security system including hardware.
In my project I have a lots of controls like panels, textboxes, labels etc. Till now I am using layout and it is getting slower and slower (and flickering more and more) as I am adding more controls in it.
My question is that isn't it better to generate controls when required and destroy them when I don't need them? Will it save memory?
Assuming that you use the VS Windows Forms Designer, it will create the code for you which will be loaded at runtime. There will be no difference if you load the controls in Form.InitializeComponent (as the Designer does) or in any other place where you wrote it yourself. The only thing the designer does is it creates the Form.Designer.cs file for you while you design the form, and you can use those controls the same way you would use the controls you create at runtime yourself.
Loading a lot of controls on a single form is not a good practice. And it will get slower as you add more contols. You should probably consider redesigning the GUI.