Develop Reference

Possible to ask for a keypressed signal at a centralized location in a paneled form?

I've got a winform application. In the application I have a Panel with multiple Buttons.
Now when the Buttons don't have the Focus I can capture the keypressed Events in the form itself. But when the Buttons have the Focus the form (even if the Buttons don't catch the Event explecitely) only they get the keypressed Event and not the form.
Now my question is: Is there any way to centralize the keypressed behaviour (without creating a keypressed Event for each and every button and call a central method with that Event)?

In essence only 1 method needs to be defined with the appropriate Parameters:
Example:
private void Event_Key_Press_Check(object sender, KeyPressEventArgs e)
This method then only Needs to be put in as the Name of the method used in the Event (form designer), or added as the Event.
That way only 1 method is used.
Thus there is no shorter way and the Event Needs to be defined for every single button (instead of 1 central Event that is always triggered).

Set form property KeyPreview to true and set KeyPress handler. Then form will handle this event before buttons.
See KeyPreview MSDN documentation.

I've had the same issue, and it was pretty easy to resolve :)
Check here : KeyPress at form level with controls
Just set the KeyPreview property (of your form) to True. This way your form will handle KeyPress event before any other control, even if one of them has the focus

Form events not fired when other control is in place

I have an application that contains a form with multiple controls.
I have subscribed to the form mouse up event. However when I click on the form if thewre is an other control placed on the form the event is not fired.
So, I would like to capture an form event on the form (even when an control is in place). Is this possible?
Thanks in advance.

As far as i know windows forms doesn't implement the concept of event bubbling. So you should manually tweak controls to handle the event. You can do it manually looping through all controls, or you can create some kind of wrapper for your form/container to subscribe to the event automatically. You may check general implementation of this idea here. .

Silverlight 4 Key Event at Control Level

I have a Silverlight control (ChildWindow) that I want to receive all key down events. The problem is that if I simply say
this.KeyDown += new KeyEventHandler(EventDetailsPopup_UC_KeyDown)
it won't work because the event is routed to all of its child controls. How do I receive Key or Mouse events from the UserControl or ChildWindow level? Thanks

You do not describe what you mean by "it won't work", but I can at least give you some background.
Silverlight supports the concept of Routed Events. When a routed event is fired on a child control, it is passes up the logical tree, firing on the control's parent, then the parent's parent etc ... until the root visual is met. The list of routed events is detailed on this MSDN page. This is called bubbling.
It looks like you want to prevent a child control from seeing this event? i.e. you want to cancel it by setting it as handled. Unfortunately this is not possible because the child control will always receive the event first. To support this you require a feature called tunneling, where a 'preview' event first tunnels from parent to child before the bubbling event is fired. This is a WPF-specific feature as described in the MSDN page referenced above.

Or if "wont work" means that you are not getting the event.
It may be beacause some child element has setted Handled parameter of eventarguments to true.
But you can still register for listening handled events in code lets say in constructor of your childwindow:
this.AddHandler(KeyDownEvent, (KeyEventHandler)YourHandlerFunction, true);

What events are triggered when ShowDialog(ParentForm) is called in C#

Simple question. I have a MainForm and a settingsForm. The settings form is initialized once and then shown every time the user clicks a button. I need it to do something when this button is clicked.
m_inputSettings.ShowDialog(this); //edit settings selected, so show that form
This is the MainForm calling the settings form, which it does fine. But I need the SettingsForm to do something every time this happens. Presently, I cant figure out if this call actually triggers any events I can set handlers for. Does it trigger an event? If not, is there another way I can tell my SettingsForm to do something every time this call happens?
Note: Any code in the mainform after that line doesn't get executed until the SettingsForm returns, but that is intentional.
Thanks.
Edit: One of the things I want my form to do it select a specific control when this happens, but it seems that that is impossible until after the form is done loading everything.

You can override the OnVisibleChanged method in your settings form. Make sure to call base.OnVisibleChanged though as to not screw up any potential observers of the event (and anything else the base class may do inside of that method.)

FormShown event - raised only once when form is displayed first time.
OnPaint / OnActivate - every time form is activated, but these events raised even when you switch with other application, which probably you don't want to do.
If you are changing form visbility, then you can use OnVisibleChanged
If you are minimizing the form, you can use OnSizeChanged / OnLocationChanged event.
If none suits you, make a public property and set false when form is closed / hidded, and set true before showing it. OnActivate, use this property to do your task.

Maybe use VisibleChanged event.

Override OnShown() event in your form this will raise only once after the form is opened
The disadvantage of OnVisibleChanged is it will also get raised when the form is closed.
On Paint , On Activate and OnEnter will raise before form is shown to the user.

Remove original event behaviour of WinForm Control

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.