How can I detect when a control is no longer visible? - c#

In my current app I have a Tree control on a page of a TabControl which is inside a panel of a SplitContainer control. The tree control can thus be hidden by either hiding the SplitContainer panel, or switching to another TabPage in the TabControl.
In the Form's menus there are commands which act on the currently selected Node in the tree. I do not want these options to be enabled when the user can not see what is selected.
Is there a simple way of determining when the TreeView goes out of view with out subscribing to the events of both the TabControl and the SplitContainer separately?

You can create a boolean member variable. In the tabchanged event, test to see if the treeview tab is selected and set the variable appropriately. Also, subscribe to the event that is fired when the splitter view size is changed. Test the width or height of the splitter to see if your treeview is hidden. If it is, set the variable here to. Then all you need to do is test your new member variable.

Test the TreeView's Visible property. There is also a VisibleChanged event.

if(!myControl.Visible)
{
// Control is not visible.
}
or
if(myControl.Visible == false)
{
// Control is not visible.
}
Or, probably the better option would be to add a handler to the VisibleChanged event, in the code (or using the Events tab in Designer view):
void myControl_VisibleChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
TreeView tView = sender as TreeView ;
if (tView.Visible)
{
// Do something.
}
else
{
// Do something.
}
}

Related

How can I give focus to any Control after a Tab has been selected

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();

Enter event not firing in Panel inside a UserControl

I added a Panel inside a UserControl i design time.
Then, I added this control to a form.
I want to show a focus dashed border when the control has the focus.
Unfortunately, the Enter event from the panel never fires. I only get a fire when I click on the user control itself.
To extend this question. How can I forward events from controls inside a user control to the base user control? A comment from Hans Passant in this question says that by default events are forwarded to their direct parent. I didn't change any of the control's properties. What am I doing wrong? Is there an obvious property I need to change on each control i order to force it to forward unhandled events?
I am using DevExpress controls but this behavior is same in windows WinForms controls.
edit: I understand that panel might not be able to get focus. If this is true, how do I forward each mouse event to the parent control?
Based on your comment, from inside your UserControl, handle the panel's MouseDown event and set the focus to the parent control:
public UserControl1() {
InitializeComponent();
panel1.MouseDown += new MouseEventHandler(panel1_MouseDown);
}
void panel1_MouseDown(object sender, MouseEventArgs e) {
if (!this.Focused)
this.Focus();
}
Use panel1.Select() on MouseClick event of the panel and you will be able to trigger panel1.Enter and panel1.Leave

Winforms ListView ItemCheck on load

I have a winform containing tabs, containing a usercontrol, containing a listview with checkboxes.
private void lvwRoles_ItemCheck(object sender, System.Windows.Forms.ItemCheckEventArgs e)
{
if (!m_loading && m_locked)
{
e.NewValue = e.CurrentValue;
return;
}
The listview is assigned it's items (some is checked) in a method (in the user control) that is called from the parent form. This is done on load of the parent form.
My problem is that the ItemCheck occurs when I click the corresponding tab the first time.
That results in the m_loading state variable being false since long ago.Thus no item is ever checked when the usercontrol is m_locked.
Is there a way to solve this without changing how the listview is populated?
The listview is assigned it's items (some is checked) in a method (in
the user control) that is called from the parent form. This is done on
load of the parent form.
Even though you call that method in the parent form_load that effectively fires when you select that tab. Set m_loading to false after user control loads, which will not occur until you select that tab.

totally disabling TabOrder on the form

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.

Is there any way to detect a mouseclick outside a user control?

I'm creating a custom dropdown box, and I want to register when the mouse is clicked outside the dropdown box, in order to hide it. Is it possible to detect a click outside a control? or should I make some mechanism on the containing form and check for mouseclick when any dropdownbox is open?
So I finally understand that you only want it to close when the user clicks outside of it. In that case, the Leave event should work just fine... For some reason, I got the impression you wanted it to close whenever they moved the mouse outside of your custom dropdown. The Leave event is raised whenever your control loses the focus, and if the user clicks on something else, it will certainly lose focus as the thing they clicked on gains the focus.
The documentation also says that this event cascades up and down the control chain as necessary:
The Enter and Leave events are hierarchical and will cascade up and down the parent chain until the appropriate control is reached. For example, assume you have a Form with two GroupBox controls, and each GroupBox control has one TextBox control. When the caret is moved from one TextBox to the other, the Leave event is raised for the TextBox and GroupBox, and the Enter event is raised for the other GroupBox and TextBox.
Overriding your UserControl's OnLeave method is the best way to handle this:
protected override void OnLeave(EventArgs e)
{
// Call the base class
base.OnLeave(e);
// When this control loses the focus, close it
this.Hide();
}
And then for testing purposes, I created a form that shows the drop-down UserControl on command:
public partial class Form1 : Form
{
private UserControl1 customDropDown;
public Form1()
{
InitializeComponent();
// Create the user control
customDropDown = new UserControl1();
// Add it to the form's Controls collection
Controls.Add(customDropDown);
customDropDown.Hide();
}
private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
// Display the user control
customDropDown.Show();
customDropDown.BringToFront(); // display in front of other controls
customDropDown.Select(); // make sure it gets the focus
}
}
Everything works perfectly with the above code, except for one thing: if the user clicks on a blank area of the form, the UserControl doesn't close. Hmm, why not? Well, because the form itself doesn't want the focus. Only controls can get the focus, and we didn't click on a control. And because nothing else stole the focus, the Leave event never got raised, meaning that the UserControl didn't know it was supposed to close itself.
If you need the UserControl to close itself when the user clicks on a blank area in the form, you need some special case handling for that. Since you say that you're only concerned about clicks, you can just handle the Click event for the form, and set the focus to a different control:
protected override void OnClick(EventArgs e)
{
// Call the base class
base.OnClick(e);
// See if our custom drop-down is visible
if (customDropDown.Visible)
{
// Set the focus to a different control on the form,
// which will force the drop-down to close
this.SelectNextControl(customDropDown, true, true, true, true);
}
}
Yes, this last part feels like a hack. The better solution, as others have mentioned, is to use the SetCapture function to instruct Windows to capture the mouse over your UserControl's window. The control's Capture property provides an even simpler way to do the same thing.
Technically, you'll need to p/invoke SetCapture() in order to receive click events that happen outside of your control.
But in your case, handling the Leave event, as #Martin suggests, should be sufficient.
EDIT: While looking for an usage example for SetCapture(), I came across the Control.Capture property, of which I was not aware. Using that property means you won't have to p/invoke anything, which is always a good thing in my book.
So, you'll have to set Capture to true when showing the dropdown, then determine if the mouse pointer lies inside the control in your click event handler and, if it doesn't, set Capture to false and close the dropdown.
UPDATE:
You can also use the Control.Focused property to determine if the control has got or lost focus when using a keyboard or mouse instead of using the Capture with the same example provided in the MSDN Capture page.
Handle the Form's MouseDown event, or override the Form's OnMouseDown
method:
enter code here
And then:
protected override void OnMouseDown(MouseEventArgs e)
{
if (!theListBox.Bounds.Contains(e.Location))
{
theListBox.Visible = false;
}
}
The Contains method old System.Drawing.Rectangle can be used to indicate if
a point is contained inside a rectangle. The Bounds property of a Control is
the outer Rectangle defined by the edges of the Control. The Location
property of the MouseEventArgs is the Point relative to the Control which
received the MouseDown event. The Bounds property of a Control in a Form is
relative to the Form.
You are probably looking for the leave event:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.control.leave.aspx
Leave occurs when the input focus leaves the control.
I just wanted to share this. It is probably not a good way of doing it that way, but looks like it works for drop down panel that closes on fake "MouseLeave", I tried to hide it on Panel MouseLeave but it does not work because moving from panel to button leaves the panel because the button is not the panel itself. Probably there is better way of doing this but I am sharing this because I used about 7 hours figuring out how to get it to work. Thanks to #FTheGodfather
But it works only if the mouse moves on the form. If there is a panel this will not work.
private void click_to_show_Panel_button_MouseDown(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
{
item_panel1.Visible = true; //Menu Panel
}
private void Form1_MouseMove(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
{
if (!item_panel1.Bounds.Contains(e.Location))
{
item_panel1.Visible = false; // Menu panel
}
}
I've done this myself, and this is how I did it.
When the drop down is opened, register a click event on the control's parent form:
this.Form.Click += new EventHandler(CloseDropDown);
But this only takes you half the way. You probably want your drop down to close also when the current window gets deactivated. The most reliable way of detecting this has for me been through a timer that checks which window is currently active:
[System.Runtime.InteropServices.DllImport("user32.dll")]
static extern IntPtr GetForegroundWindow();
and
var timer = new Timer();
timer.Interval = 100;
timer.Tick += (sender, args) =>
{
IntPtr f = GetForegroundWindow();
if (this.Form == null || f != this.Form.Handle)
{
CloseDropDown();
}
};
You should of course only let the timer run when the drop down is visible. Also, there's probably a few other events on the parent form you'd want to register when the drop down is opened:
this.Form.LocationChanged += new EventHandler(CloseDropDown);
this.Form.SizeChanged += new EventHandler(CloseDropDown);
Just don't forget to unregister all these events in the CloseDropDown method :)
EDIT:
I forgot, you should also register the Leave event on you control to see if another control gets activated/clicked:
this.Leave += new EventHandler(CloseDropDown);
I think I've got it now, this should cover all bases. Let me know if I'm missing something.
If you have Form, you can simply use Deactivate event just like this :
protected override void OnDeactivate(EventArgs e)
{
this.Dispose();
}

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