Develop Reference

Preventing Winform from being maximized?

I want to prevent my desktop application from being maximized. It should not become maximized by any means - by double clicking on title bar, or by clicking Windows + Up arrow on the keyboard, etc.
-> I disable both the MaximizeBox and MinimizeBox.
-> I also set the MaximumSize and MinimumSize for my WinForm
Still when I press Windows + Up arrow, my win form Shifts to top left of the screen, I mean it gets maximized.
So please tell me any way to prevent this thing happening...

There are actually two completely separate issues at work here. Granted, they look basically the same from a functional perspective, but from an implementation-model perspective (as Windows itself would naturally use) they are unrelated.
As others have answered, you can prevent your form from being maximized by setting its MaximizeBox property to false. This removes the WS_MAXIMIZEBOX style on the form's underlying window, which prevents the window manager from allowing the window to be maximized. It disables the maximize box on the window's caption bar (the one between the minimize box and the close box), disables the "Maximize" option on the window/system menu, and any other methods of maximizing a window that I may have forgotten.
However, this has nothing to do with the Win+↑ keyboard shortcut, which invokes Aero Snap the same as would dragging the window to the the magic position sat the edges of the screen. The window manager, whether as a result of a bug or a feature of Aero Snap, still allows you to effectively "maximize" windows that should not otherwise be maximized. Setting the MaximizeBox property doesn't affect this, so if you truly want to prevent the user from changing the window's size this way, you will need to disable Aero Snap's effect on your window.
Unfortunately, there's no method (at least, not to my knowledge) of programmatically disabling Aero Snap on a per-window or per-process basis (also see this related question). If the user has Aero Snap enabled, you can assume that they want that behavior and applications aren't supposed to tamper with it. The only thing you can do is completely disable resizing your window. In WinForms, you do that by setting the FormBorderStyle property to one of the following: FormBorderStyle.FixedSingle, FormBorderStyle.Fixed3D, or FormBorderStyle.FixedDialog. If you still want your window to be resizable in other ways, you will need to write the code to handle that manually, which is not a particularly easy task.
Thus, I encourage you to very carefully consider whether this is really necessary. All other non-maximizable windows accomplish this simply by setting the MaximizeBox property (or doing the equivalent in their UI framework), which means that they can still be effectively maximized via Aero Snap. If this works for everyone else's windows, including those that are part of Windows itself, it should probably work for you.

The form has a property called MaximizeBox - set this to false.
In regard to your second question, check out this question and it's answers for the best ways to implement keyboard shortcuts in WinForms.

this.FormBorderStyle = FormBorderStyle.FixedSingle;
That line of code will prevent the user from re-sizing the Window.
In addition to that you hide/disable the maximize box and that should do what you asked.
To disable the maximize box use this
this.MaximizeBox = false;
To hide the maximize box use this as well
this.MinimizeBox = false;
If Maximize and Minimize are set to false the buttons disappear.

Setting the MaximumSize equal to the Size (or some size) at least stops the windows from going full-screen. It still snaps to the top left corner but it's still a window at least and looks right - like it's Windows being stupid instead of your program.

You can prevent the windows snapping to the upper left corner by setting:
private void toolbox_Move(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
this.WindowState = FormWindowState.Normal;
}
in the move event of the form.

There is a property of the Form class named "MaximumBox" you have to set False in the properties window of your form... This actually will disable the form from being maximized by any way... Also if you want to control your form sizes you can work with such properties as "MinimumSize, MaximumSize" setting their values at your discretion or creating an event handler for the MaximumSizeChanged and MinimumSizeChanged events...

You can try to RegisterHotKey Win+Up if your window or application is activated and unregister this hot key if it is deactivated. You must catch the hotkey and return appropriate value to prevent further processing.
Look at WM_ACTIVATEAPP, WM_ACTIVATE and WM_NCACTIVATE. The first can be used if you want to disable the Win+UP for all your windows.

Set formborderstyle to fixedsingle
Maximizebox=false
Set the maximumsize to the size of winform's default size
Ex: if size(646,385) then set maximumsize(646,385)

One thing you can do is set the MaximumSize and MinimumSize in the same value but not 0,0.

It's easy easy! Apply the folling code to maintain window's state to normal when a resize event is triggered.
protected override void OnResize(EventArgs e) {
base.OnResize(e);
WindowState = FormWindowState.Normal;
}

Hide buttons on top form bar

Greetings,
I have a simple winform application of which I want to remove the minimize, maximize and close buttons but I want to keep the top bar so people can keep moving the application.
I've been searching for some hooks to do this but sadly I havn't found anything yet.
Does anyone know if this is possible ?

Simply set ControlBox to false:
ControlBox = false;
Make sure your form still has a title so that the title bar shows in full.

Set the ControlBox Property for the window to false.

C# topmost window

I have two windows form and both set the topmost property to true. But the form border style of the one form is Set to "None". The other form has border. When these two forms launch together, the one without the border is always on top and overlap the other form. How do i make the form with border always on top? thanks.

I suggest you to start the form with borders last or set other form TopMost property to false.
[Edit] I sugest you to look at the Forms Owner property - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.form.owner.aspx.
formWithoutBorders.AddOwnedForm(borderForm);
borderForm.Show();

Show (make Visible) the window that is supposed to be on top, later as the other window.
Topmost only works between non-topmost and topmost windows. Between Topmost windows, the normal rules apply of what window to show.

To understand why this is happening, I recommend Raymond Chen's What if two programs did this article

Create a System-tray styled box in Winforms (C#)

I've been hunting about for some resources on this, and I can't find any, so I'll bring in here.
I want to make a window similar in style to the quick launch box which you see when you open the quick launch bar:
Example Window http://img63.imageshack.us/img63/6204/volcontrolstyleguide.png
Sadly, I can't find any resources on this; can you help me out?

It's quite simple. Create a new form, and set ControlBox, MaximizeBox, and MinimizeBox properties to false. Set the Title property to an empty string. This will effectively eliminate the the nonclient title bar area, giving you this:
The the interior section (like with "Customize") can be duplicated with a properly sized Panel and Link.

Assumptions :
this is a fixed size form, never re-sizable
you want this to work on XP as well as Vista (i.e., without using Vista specific techniques like 'Glass). I mention this because, after all, the System Tray does go back to the late paleolithic :)
Here's how :
create a Form the same size as your .png file
set the ControlBox, MaximizeBox, MinimizeBox properties to 'false
set FormBorderStyle to 'None
set the transparency key of the Form to some color, and set the background color of the Form to the same color : note use a color that does not occur in the .png file.
put a PictureBox on the Form, set its Dock property to 'Fill : set its Margin property #0 for all Margins : set its BackColor to 'Transparent : then, naturally, set the Image property of the PictureBox to your .png file.
NOTE :
If you have prepared your .png image so it is bounded by a transparent area so that it appears rounded : you can use that directly and skip over the whole step of actually making the Form a Rounded Rectangle by use of an API call to set the Region of the Form : this does mean your Form will have a standard rectangular bounding box. If you can live with this : this is a simpler solution. For how to set the Region : read on ...
see "How to make form rounded rectangle or round or triangle" here on SO for how to set the Region of the Form to a RoundedRect : this SO entry has several other links in it to code examples : the link mentioned by Zyphrax here uses the same basic technique.
experiment with the settings to the 'CreateRoundRect to get the rounded corner effect you want.

That sounds like you need Windows 7 API Code Pack, in which some API's are backward compatible with Vista. Since the specific version of Windows is not stated, I cannot say specifically..you could look here and here on CodeProject how this is accomplished.
Hope this helps,
Best regards,
Tom.

You can take an normal Form and modify it to look like your screenshot:
Set the FormBorderStyle property to None
Round the corners of your form: more info here
(Extend the glass if you like: more info here, only Vista or higher)
Set the background to White and add some controls to finish it off

How to make a form behave like windows taskbar using c#

I have created a taskbar using tabcontrols which works similarly to the Windows taskbar.
I want to make my own taskbar fixed on top of the windows.
It should not be movable, resizable, and it should be "docked" to the top.

I have not tried to do this, but my first attempt would be the following:
set form to be 'TopMost'
set border to 'None'
set Location: (0,0), Size(Screen.Width,H), where H is the Height you want your form to be
set 'ShowInTaskBar' to false
Something you might consider: how will you handle multiple screens?
You'll likely want to add a context menu allowing you to exit the application, since it won't have the normal system buttons. Also, you might consider what happens when the user presses ALT-F4: will your program close? If not, you'll need to add some code in the FormClosing event handler to cancel closing.
Hope this sets you in the right direction!

A long long time ago Jeffery Richter demonstrated how to do a true taskbar in a sample called AppBar (I've used it myself as a boiler plate), so here are some pages that may be of interest:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Jeffrey+Richter+appbar+c#