adding a windows form object to listbox - c#

I'm creating a twitter client in C#.
I want to put every tweet as an element of a listbox.
I created a windows form that represents a tweet(it has a picture, and labels).
My problem is that when i can't see the tweets when i add them to the listbox. After adding 3 tweets(windows form objects), the listbox has 3 blank elements in them, but i can't see anything of it.
How can i add a windows form object to a listbox?
(these forms are working fine, because i can see them if i use the ShowDialog method)
please help

You can add a Form object to the ListBox.Items collection but the only thing you'll ever see is the type name of the form. ListBox is not capable of rendering controls as its items.
The efficient solution is to implement the ListBox.DrawItem event and custom draw the tweet. There's a good example of such an event handler in the MSDN Library documentation for the event.
The slow solution is to add controls to a Panel's Collection property with its AutoScroll property set to true. That cannot be a form, it must be a UserControl.

You may want to look into implementing it using WPF. Where you can pretty much put anything inside a listbox.

Some thoughts:
You'd do better to work with custom controls, rather than a whole form
A listbox can't have controls on it... consider a ListView: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/list/ListViewEmbeddedControls.aspx
Some example code of what you're trying will help us zoom in on what you're doing
HTH,
James

I don't think ListBox can display anything but a text string for each element, so you won't be able to see an image of each form if that's what you were hoping for. You might try using FlowLayoutPanel instead to manage a list of controls.

Related

Winforms UI Dynamically Displaying Parts

I came across a tutorial and some example code for an audio converter. You select the format you want to convert to from a drop down, and when you do all sorts of options appear in a previously blank area, different options based on the format you choose. It's called Audio Converter .NET and is from same author as Audio CD Ripper .NET. I can't find the tutorial, but here is a screenshot.
See how on the right there is extra controls that are not on the left. I was experimenting trying to add another category. I added it to the dropdown, but am unsure how to make it so certain fields come up when it is selected.
I understand that they create those controls for those items, but I don't see how they call the correct one when the combo box selects something. I see controls are created, but if I try to duplicate the controls into another entry in the combo box they don't show up for either the new or old one I was duplicating from.
What's the best way to go about achieving something like this?
Thanks
The easiest way is to create the controls needed for every option in the dropdown inside a panel, and simply turn it's visibility property from false to true whenever it's corresponding option is selected using the combobox's SelectedIndexChanged event handler. (And don't forget to turn the current visible panel's visibility to false)

load the entire ListView in background and get an UIControl inside each ListItem

I need to load a ListView entirely and get an UIControl inside each ListItem even if the item view is not displayed on the screen.
I tried the ChildViewAdded event, but it is raised only when the ListItem is displayed on the screen.
So, I need a way to prepare my UI ListView programmatically before displaying it.
Thanks in advance for your help.
Quick answer - if you need a real View for each item in your list then you don't want to use a virtualized control like a ListView.
Instead you can use repeated custom views inside a vertical LinearLayout inside a ScrollView.
If using mvvmcross, you may find a MVXBindableLinearLayout helpful to do this - it has an ItemsSource and a Template just like the MvxBindableListView.
I've no idea whether what you are trying to do makes sense, but the above should help you do it if you want to!
Don't try using a linear layout for lists with lots of items - you'll run out of resources.

What would be the best course of action for display different form in a single Winform?

Here's a screenshot of my application:
Basically, depending on what option is selected I'd like to show another 'content' which can be a buttons, or forms or whatever.
What would be the best choice for this? Using MDI? I'm really new to this type of thing.
This scenario lends itself well to tab pages, as you'd find on a TabControl.
However, since you already have a mechanism for switching between the content, you might prefer to create a series of Panels whose Dock property is set to DockStyle.Fill. When the user clicks the appropriate heading, you simply need to show the appropriate panel and call BringToFront() on it. This is essentially what the tab control does internally, anyway.
Don't forget to use SuspendLayout() and ResumeLayout() appropriately to reduce flicker, which can be a huge problem in WinForms applications, especially when there are lots of controls.
You can position a TabControl where the buttons are not visible and control it from your buttons.

Winforms Creating Dropdown style panel

I am attempting to create my own custom Autocomplete style dropdown control in c# .net2.0. For speed of development I have built my control as a UserControl but have hit on an issue of doing it this way.
When the custom drawn dropdown gets drawn I have to resize the UserControl area to be able to display the list of options.
Ideally I want to be able to mimic the drodpown list behaviour in that the list of options is drawn 'floating' and is not constrained by the UserControls height and width (nor even the parent forms boundaries). A tooltip is another example of the unconstrained 'floating' that I desire.
The only way I can think of achieving this is to create on the fly a new form with no border or title bar and display this when the popup is required.
Is there a better (but also quick) way of doing this?
TIA
You would need to use a Form or NativeWindow to allow the control to float correctly. To make a form follow the control is easy enough but it is more difficult to implement and handle all of the focusing/hiding issues especially if you need seamless tabbing/key navigation.
You can try creating a control that is based off the ToolStrip Drop Down Button control. I believe that this control has the functionality that you are looking for. I found this reference for creating controls based off the ToolStrip, you might try starting with this.
http://blogs.msdn.com/jfoscoding/attachment/1335869.ashx

Dynamic top down list of controls in WindowsForms and C#?

In our project, SharpWired, we're trying to create a download component similar to the download windows in Firefox or Safari. That is, one single top down list of downloads which are custom controls containing progress bars, buttons and what not.
The requirements are that there should be one single list, with one element on each row. Each element must be a custom control. The whole list should be dynamically re-sizable, so that when you make it longer / shorter the list adds a scroll bar when needed and when you make it thinner / wider the custom controls should resize to the width of the list.
We've tried using a FlowLayoutPanel but haven't gotten resizing to work the way we want to. Preferably we should only have to set anchoring of the custom controls to Left & Right. We've also thought about using a TableLayoutPanel but found adding rows dynamically to be a too big overhead so far.
This must be quite a common use case, and it seems a bit weird to me that the FlowLayoutPanel has no intuitive way of doing this. Has anyone done something similar or have tips or tricks to get us under way?
Cheers!
/Adam
If you don't want to use databinding (via the DataRepeater control, as mentioned above), you could use a regular Panel control and set its AutoScroll property to true (to enable scrollbars).
Then, you could manually add your custom controls, and set the Dock property of each one to Top.
.NET 3.5 SP1 introduced a DataRepeater Windows Forms control which sounds like it'd do what you want. Bind it to the list of "downloads" (or whatever your list represents) and customize each item panel to include the controls you need.

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