In java swing I can insert panels into panels and so on, and not have to build a brand new window for every view of my applicaiton, or mess around removing and adding controls.
Theres a panel clas sin C# however I cant see any way of creating a 'panel form' or basically just a form in form designer thats a panel and its contents.
How do I do this then and work the way I did with java swing?
Usually i just dock different forms within eachother setting the IsMdiContainer Property to true on the parent window. Then i create subforms that i dock using the following function:
static class FormUtil
{
static public void showForm(Form sender, Control reciever)
{
sender.ControlBox = false;
sender.FormBorderStyle = FormBorderStyle.None;
sender.ShowInTaskbar = false;
sender.TopLevel = false;
sender.Visible = true;
sender.Dock = DockStyle.Fill;
reciever.Controls.Clear(); //clear panel first
reciever.Controls.Add(sender);
}
}
then whenever i need to dock a form inside a panel on the parents form i just do:
FormUtil.showForm(new SomeForm(), this.splitContainer1.Panel1);
This allows me to delegate some of the form creation to different designers. Works like a charm for me, love to hear if theres a better way of doing it.
Actually, you can use the panel control and set it's Dock property to Fill. That way, your panel will be the entire canvas of the form. Then, you can add child panels as needed either through code behind or through forms designer.
There's the concept of user controls which basicly provides you with a panel like designer surface , not to mention that you can create atomic forms (which can be reused) and register them as inheritable, that way you can provide inheritance too.
Related
Windows 7 pro 64 bit, VS2015 or VS2019
Hi,
I have a C# Win Form with many various controls.
I defined the main form as MDI parent and built an MDI child form with it's own controls, activated by a menue item in the main.
The child form builds nicely, but it is always displayed under the main form's many different controls.
I have tried many remedies, non of whch solved the problem.
I'v Set the child form as TopMost = true; TopLevel = true; each or all, for no avail.
Have moved from VS2015 to VS2019 community - Same.
I have been wasting hours to solve something that seems to be strightforward.
Can anyone help me out of this?
//In Main Form with menustrip, ComPortSetup is a standard winform class with some controls
private void portSetupToolStripMenuItem_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
ComPortSetup comPortSetup = new ComPortSetup();
comPortSetup.MdiParent = this;
comPortSetup.TopMost = true;
comPortSetup.TopLevel = true; //Can not change programmatically
comPortSetup.Show();
}
That is how MDI works, there is no way around that.
All controls on the MDI Parent form will take away "client" space for the MDI child forms. And thus they will always be shown on top of any MDI Child form.
In other words, the MDI child forms can only use the space that is on the MDI Parent form that is not occupied already by other controls.
What you can do is put a panel on the MDI Parent form, and for example dock it to the left. Then put your "main" controls on that panel. The MDI Child forms will use whatever space is left on your MDI Parent form.
You could put a splitter control next to this panel so you can make it larger or smaller, or make it slidable so the panel comes forward when your mouse is near it, and hides itself again when the mouse is moving away from it.
Another approach you can try, is not making it MDI anymore and set the parent of the "child" forms yourself. But this will most likely cause other problems.
I would try the first approach, the panel on the mainform, docked to the left with a splitter control next to it.
I am not sure, but I believe that when using MDI forms, it is not expected that the parent has its own controls on the main form area, otherwise you will experience this exact problem.
So there are a couple of ways around this.
Firstly you can place a Panel on your parent form, and then your child can be added to the Panel.
This is now "proper" MDI control however, but it might allow you to achieve what you want.
ChildForm child = new ChildForm();
parentPanel.controls.add(child); //ParentPanel needs to already be on main form
Or the other method is to put your Parent Controls either on a MenuStrip (like MS Word) or you can use a Floating Dockable child form (think Visual Studio) which is then always visible.
If you want to do the latter, then I would suggest DockPanelSuite control to help you with this
https://github.com/dockpanelsuite/dockpanelsuite
How can I show topmost a button clicked child form in my parent form (with a tabcontrol which docked as fill)?
It always shows the form at the back of the tabcontrol of the parent form, I've even used:
frm.TopMost = true;
frm.BringToFront();
Still shows at the back.
What you want is not possible. MDI children of a control get shown on a control (which you can't directly select) called MdiClient, which is not transparent (and can't be) and by default, goes always to the back of other controls in the parent form.
So the only way to do this, would be getting the MdiClient over the controls in the parent form: this would do what you expect, but it would also hide the parent controls when there are no child forms displayed (since again, the MdiClient is not, and can't be transparent).
So the only reasonable way would be having a maximized child form with the TabControl, instead of having that TabControl directly on the parent.
Or you could have your TabControl only shown when there are no child windows. For that, make a timer in the parent form, and check this at every interval:
if(MdiChildren.Length > 0)
myTabControl.SendToBack();
else
myTabControl.SendToFront();
This will only work if the MDI children are always maximized: your TabControl will not be visible when there are any children (no matter if they cover it or not)
Update
As remarked in the comments, you can have "your own MDI", by having a host control (a Panel, for example) in the parent form and loading the child forms in that control:
var form = new ChildForm();
form.TopLevel = false;
form.Parent = myHostPanel;
form.Show();
This would show the form inside the panel (which you can locate and zorder where you want)... you lose all the MDI management though, and you'll have to keep track of your children (and take care of the forms' events if needed) yourself.
I'd not use this solution, it's pretty hacky and can get messy for big applications (unless you do a correct system)
As a summary
Since we're discussing these methods in the comments
You can hack your way to do what you want, but you'll come into all sorts of problems with any approach.
If I was you, I'd redesign my application so that what you want to achieve is not needed. If you can't do that, the only sane way would be just not having those controls in the parent form, have an always-maximized, non-closable MDI child form with those controls, and skip that window everytime you need to work in the MDI children collection.
Please explain what components of what frameworks you are using and what you have done so far. Without that information i suggest the following solution (untested).
In the "ButtonClick" event of your ParentForm do this:
ChildForm cf = new ChildForm();
cf.MdiParent = this;
cf.Show();
If this doesn't work you may add a
cf.Focus();
This question make me uncomfortable :). after a lot of testing, I can't really find a solution. neither BringToFront() Function nor SendToBack() Work Properly. maybe the following approach can help you. I use IntersectWith Function of Rectangle Class and test if form intersect with tabControl or not. if so change the tab control visibility to false otherwise true. take a look at the following code:
first make form declaration public at the mdi parent form:
public partial class MdiParentForm : Form
{
Form frm = new Form();
}
After that when you initialize your child form, add some handler to its locationChanged event, like this:
frm.MdiParent = this;
frm.LocationChanged += Frm_LocationChanged;
frm.Show();
And at the end, This is the handler:
private void Frm_LocationChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
Rectangle tabControlRectangle = new Rectangle(tabControl1.Location, tabControl1.Size);
Rectangle childFormRectangle = new Rectangle(frm.Location, frm.Size);
if (tabControlRectangle.IntersectsWith(childFormRectangle))
{
tabControl1.Visible = false;
}
else
{
tabControl1.Visible = true;
}
}
Thanks to #Jcl, Problem with this is that the tab control will hide and show as long as any point of the child form touches its rectangle. Moving the child form around would be horrible :-)
I'm new in C#, and I wanted to know if there was any way to show a screen with certain elements, and then with the click of a button, switch to another screen, similar to an installer.
From my experience in Java, I would just use a few JPanels and then hide only the one i want visible.
However, I'm new to C# forms and it's very different from Java swing. Anyone understand my problem and can tell me pretty much how this works? Thanks.
Simple approach
Just use a Grid with multiple Grids inside of it. Set the Visibility property of each internal Grid (except the first one you want to show) to Hidden or Collapsed, and then set them to Visible when you want to display them.
Better approach
Create a class for each section, each of which derives from the same parent class. Create a DataTemplate for the parent class, then just have instances of the template load into the original Grid through a ContentPresenter.
You can try this creating new forms. From my experience I've tried this:
Form2 formTwo = new Form2(); // creates instance
formTwo.Show(); // displays the new form
this.WindowState = FormWindowState.Minimized; // minimizes previous form
this.ShowInTaskbar = false; // hides it from taskbar
Keep in mind that this does not close the previous form. I would recommend setting ShowIntaskbar as True if you don't mind the user seeing the form minimized.
EDIT: If you want to show new elements I suggest you can try adding a new Form class to the project then using the designer.
I have an app which consists of a Form that after loading adds two Controls that are descended from UserControl. The UserControls are sharing the same coordinate space and I alternate which one is visible with BringToFront()/SendToBack(). Basically a poor man's WPF Pages. The UC's each have a panel that takes up the entire area of the UserControl and the panels contain all of the Buttons, TextBoxes, DataGridView's, etc.
Basically, I'm trying to make the UserControls size with the Form containing them, using either the Dock or Anchor properties, but the problem is the UserControl itself doesn't appear to have these properties, so when I resize the window, the panels containing all the content never get bigger. I've tried setting both the Anchor and Dock properties of the Panels inside each UserControl to no avail. I've also tried adding a FlowLayoutPanel to the Form, and then adding the UserControls to that instead of directly to the Form object. Same result. Did I screw myself by going with UserControls containing panels? Any way to fix this? PS, I'm kinda new to C#/.NET. Been doing most of my dev work in Java for a while now.
Code ex:
//Add the panels
FsLookupPanel = new FSLookupPanel(this, this.LdapConn, this.dbConnect);
MakeResPanel = new MakeReservationPanel(this, this.dbConnect);
this.flowLayoutPanel1.Controls.Add(FsLookupPanel);
this.flowLayoutPanel1.Controls.Add(MakeResPanel);
//this.Controls.Add(FsLookupPanel);
//this.Controls.Add(MakeResPanel);
FsLookupPanel.Visible = true;
MakeResPanel.Visible = false;
Have you tryed somthing like this ?
FsLookupPanel.Dock = MakeResPanel.Dock = DockStyle.Fill;
this.flowLayoutPanel1.Controls.Add(FsLookupPanel);
this.flowLayoutPanel1.Controls.Add(MakeResPanel);
this work with framework 3.5 so you should be alright with 4.5
You don't have it when setting the properties via the designer but the property is there. Via code it is working
I have a C# Forms tab application. Each TabPage has a menu on the left (Outlook style navigation panel), and a Panel on the right for content.
If I want the content panel for tab page 0, how would I go about fetching it? I'm a bit stumped because I don't know how to index into the controls collection on a tab page. The following is underlined in red, so I believe its wrong.
Panel panel = tabControl.TabPages[0].Controls["Panel"];
EDIT: remove Window in Panel sub question. It will be moved to a separate question.
Sorry about the beginner questions. I'm a C/C++ guy with lots of MFC time, and C# UI is a bit frustrating at the moment.
foreach (Control control in tabControl1.TabPages[0].Controls)
{
// if (control.Name == "panel1")
}
You can always call this recursively on control.Controls to find a control in any hierarchy. control.Name can be used to find your specific control.
You can't show a Form, inside a Panel. You could create Custom Control where you can add your functionality and add that control to a Panel.
in order to create a new form for example you need to create a variable of what ever form that it is you want to create.
example
Form2 frm2 = new Form2();
frm2.Show();
if you want to show that form in the panel then the panel would be the Owner keep in mind the difference between Owner and Parent
please paste what ever code you have so far and we can suggest the necessary changes
Finally, how does one display a Window in a Panel? - you don't want to do that. If you want a window and a panel to share a piece of UI functionality, create a user control with all the the functionality and then you can place it in a form or in a panel.
A possibility to encapsulate complex UI content is to create a UserControl. This way you can create a reusable piece of complex UI you can basically add as a "blob" inside a form.
The reason why
Panel panel = tabControl.TabPages[0].Controls["Panel"];
is underlined red is because the Controls collection returns a Control which might be a Panel but also might be something else. So you need to cast it:
Panel panel = tabControl.TabPages[0].Controls["Panel"] as Panel;
if (panel != null)
{
// got a panel here so do something
}
Also: MSDN has some good resources - you should make use of it.