Develop Reference

Moving Controls from One Tab Page to Another

I currently am working on a WinForm project in which there are several different tabs. Within each tab there are various controls such as buttons, sub-tabs, text-boxes, ect...
I need to consolidate the overall application which involves taking certain controls from one tab and moving them to another. When I first tried doing so, I simply copy and pasted the controls. As you can imagine this didn't work due to the fact that I didn't move the properties with the controls, I really just created NEW ones on a different tab. Therefore when I complied the code, nothing worked because there was no code assigned to the new controls.
When I tried it again, this time I CUT and paste which also maintains the same properties as the old controls (specifically the reference name in the code), so as far as I can tell, the code should identify the controls by name, and apply the same actions. However, when I compile the code, the application successfully builds but the controls do not perform any actions.
At this point I am not sure what to do...

Use the Document Outline.
View... Other Windows... Document Outline.
Select the required component and drag it from one tab page to the other in the tree control. I did this and the actions are preserved in the new tab page.

Drag the item out of the tab control and onto the form itself. Change to the other tab. Then drag the item into that tab. It is essentially 2 drag moves, but since you do not ever cut, all code linking is maintained. If your tab control takes up the entire form, simply make it smaller while you do the preceding steps and then make it large again when you are done.

When you "cut" the controls, you sever the connections between the controls and their respective events. When you "paste" them again, they're not hooked up to the events anymore, so they don't appear to do anything.
The "event" methods should still be present in your code, but you'll have to manually go through and subscribe each event to each control again (via the Properties window).
Alternatively, revert those changes, then open the .Designer.cs file and look for something like this:
this.tabPage1.Controls.Add(this.dataGridView1);
Which (for example) places dataGridView1 inside tabPage1.
If you wanted to move the DataGridView to another TabPage, you could just change this.tabPage1 in the above code to this.tabPage2.
this.tabPage2.Controls.Add(this.dataGridView1);
Then you can flip back over to the designer view and move the control around to wherever you want it within the TabPage.

I just tested it. What is happening when you cut and paste your controls, you losing the wiring of the events. What you need to do after cut and paste is to go to control properties-events, find the event in question and on the right, select a method that you want to handle that event.

This will cut them from the first TabPage and paste them on the second, i think you can do this as often as you want. And with a small change you can make it a truly copy.
hope it helps
private void ControlsToTabPage(TabPage from, TabPage to)
{
Control[] ctrlArray = new Control[from.Controls.Count];
from.Controls.CopyTo(ctrlArray, 0);
to.Controls.AddRange(ctrlArray);
}

How do I create a Tab Control with no Tab Header in Windows form?

I have created a Windows form using a Tab Control, but it has a header with it. I want to hide it. I am not able to do it using any properties of the Tab Control. Is there any property defined for hiding the tab header for the Tab Control without going through the code?

Use following code to hide the tabs or set these properties in design.
tabControl.Appearance = TabAppearance.FlatButtons;
tabControl.ItemSize = new Size(0, 1);
tabControl.SizeMode = TabSizeMode.Fixed;

You want the tab panels without the feature allowing a user to switch between them, so I suppose you want to create few separate sets of controls to be shown to the user one at a time. You can achieve this in several ways (you can choose one of them if you find it appropriate in your case):
Use several Panel controls instead of several tabs in the TabControl, however, it would be hard to work in the designer, because all the controls would be visible
Use different Forms instead of tabs to keep the layout parts separated. It can be ok, but you may not want to use multiple Forms, so it depends on a specific case.
and finally, the suggested solution:
Encapsulate each set of controls in a UserControl. This allows you to keep each layout separately, so you can easily design each of them without the other controls getting in the way ;). The the code handling each of the layouts would also be separated. Then just drag those controls in the Form and use set their visibilities appropriately to show the one you want.
If none of those suggestions work for you, let me know, so I can look for other possible solutions.

It's more easy as you think, you just drag the panel's window upper, so will be outside of the form.

Use DrawMode: OwnerDrawFixed will hide TabPage header text DrawMode : OwnerDrawFixed

Another way to achieve the same (or similar) is: You can remove tabs from TabControl.TabPages collection and then add the tab you want to show.
During the Form initialization I remove tabs (so into the designer I can easily manage them) and in some control event (as button click) I show the tab the user has to see.
Something like that:
// During form load:
ctrTab.TabPages.Clear();
// ......
// During button click or some other event:
if(rbSend.Checked)
ctrTab.TabPages.Add(pgSend);
else
ctrTab.TabPages.Add(pgReceive);
In this way the user can still see the header tab but just as title of controls group, he can't change/switch the current active tab.

Problem with order of Dock->Top controls

C# WinForms:
I am designing my form and I have a couple of TableLauots. so I design my first tablelayout, throw it on the panel and set Dock->Top ... then I design my second one and do the same and set Dock->Top, it goes to Top again and good, it places under the previous one that was on top...I design the third one and set its dock.top and good it is under second one which is under first one...but I dunno what is the diffrence for the forth one that when I set its dock.top, it changes the order of the other three ones and get places some where in between them, it does not get placed under the third one...any idea what should I look in to?

It depends on the order you have added those controls to their container. The earlier added control will be the topper one and so on ...
To fix it, "Cut" the forth control and "Paste" it again to the container and it will take the desirable place.
Another way to fix it is by modifying the designer file code to re-order the adding of those controls to their container.

Right click on the Controls and select "Send to Back" or "Bring to Front", or use the Document Outline Window to rearrange the Z-Order of the items. Document Outline helps a lot when creating WinForms things with lots of controls.

The dock layout is based on the order they are added to the container.
I usually go to the *.Designer.cs file and modify the InitializeComponent() method to manually re-order how the controls are added to the container.
this.Controls.Add(this.panel1);
this.Controls.Add(this.panel4);
this.Controls.Add(this.panel3);
this.Controls.Add(this.panel2);
This order is opposite on display

You have to organize the order of your controls in the Document Outline window (VIEW -> Other Windows -> Document Outline (Ctrl+W, U)). Select your form in Desing Mode and you will see all your components in a tree view. Use the arrows on the top to select the desired order.
It is better than cut and past because it will avoid loss of binding callbacks.

You can change the ordering of a control to move to a particular index
containerPanel.Controls.SetChildIndex(Control, n); //sets control to be the Nth element from the bottom

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.

How to design the UI for settings according to different options in C# WinForm?

This is a .NET winform application question.
I come to this design from time to time. A simple form. On top of the form you have a list of options to select. According to different option chosen, the body of the form displays a unique panel of setting detail.
How to design this UI in Visual Studio neatly? I have two ideas. First idea is to have many panels, each panel contains setting controls. In runtime, hide all panels but the one according to the selection of option. In this solution, it is hard to organize the controls of the form in VS designer. You need to set the form big to hold all the panels. Panels are put one next to each other. There are many runtime loading code to write. For example, when loading the form, you need to hide panels, reset the form size. When you pick an option, you need to relocate the panels and show/hide them. Tedious!
Second idea is to use TabControl. TabControl is good because the tabs are well organized for you. You don't need to relocate panels and resize the form. All you need to do in runtime is to select the right tab according to options. One thing, you need to hide parts of the TabControl from user because after all it is not a real TabControl. Hiding the tab buttons of the TabControl is not hard but I find that after that there is always a big gap between the tab area and the following part on the form.
Dose anyone have a decent way of designing the UI? Maybe not using panels or TabControls but some smarter way? If TabControl is used most of the time, how to hide and show the tab parts of the TabControl and how to set the margin and border size of the TabControl so no big gap exists? Many thanks to any answer and suggestion.

When I need to do this, I put each group of controls in its own UserControl, and then I can use something else to switch between them. See, for example, Implementing a paged Options dialog on my blog.

I suggest you create UserControls for each of your "setting details" and when the user selects an option you load the accordant UserControl. You might have to adjust the forms size, but therefore you can easily manage all the "setting details" in your IDE.

Using user control is a good way to solve your problem. But you need set them probably in panels and play with properties "Visible" and "Dock".
You don't need to Dock them at "Fill" in design mode. You can set this property à runtime or when needed.
Hope this help.

Sounds like you need some design pattern.
Why not create a UI factory that returns your UI objects as needed/required?