I am using Visual Studio 2019 in order to create a Windows Form Application. I need some titles in my application, which means these strings will not be modified by the user.
For now, I created textboxes for these titles and made these textboxes "read-only". However, this does not satisfy my aesthetical expectations.
Therefore, I wonder if there is a way to add a string without adding a textbox, to the form. Is there a way?
Thanks in advance :)
Consider using a Label control rather than a TextBox.
The only time I would use a TextBox as a label is if I want the user to be able to copy the info, and I make it borderless, readonly and have the same colour as the background of the form. It's not superb UX though as there isn't anything that screams "you can highlight and copy this text" other than an I beam cursor, which is pretty much "mystery meat navigation" - better off putting a copy button next to it if you expect the user to copy info often
Why not use Label for your titles?
Since label, by default, cannot be modified by the user, thats what you want. Textbox is used for the user input, not for the titles.
Use Label control that is the right control to use for your requirement
Related
How do I display Price value($) in textbox next to a label when user checks the radio button, select one of item from listBox, and then clicks the button?
Is there way to do it on the form1.cs[Design] using the properties? Or do I need to set them up in code level?
listBox item example
EDIT: Solved this in Code-level.
I don't think you can do it without any code.
Also I'd recommend you to check out this page - just a few simple rules can make your chances to get a good answer on this site much better.
And there is not much of coding needed to solve your problem. Take a look on the Events tab in Property view in form designer. A few event handlers to process user input and some fields inside your class to store the data - I assume it is not some serious business app you're dealing with, so all the code you need for this to work would be like 20 lines tops -)
I am currently developing a chat application in C# and I would like to know which form control allows to add text retaining control to each specific message to modify it later on when is required. I want this in order to be able to add a double tick when the message is received in the other side of the communication, pretty much like in "Whatsapp".
I've thought about an approach consisting on each message object firing events (like "sent", "received"..) when it changes that are listened by the corresponding form control that serves as the view, adding the above mentioned tick.
Any advice on how to achieve this goal? I've tried TextBox but Lines property force to have control os indexes and I want it to be completely event driven. Currently I stuck with DataGridView, however I've made little to no progress.
Thanks!
No one ready made Control I can think of will do the job, I'm afraid.
I would use a FlowLayoutPanel and add a Label for each chunk of text that gets added to the chat.
You can use MeasureString with a given width to get the height of the Label. (AutoSize should be off.)
The Labels would get the Width of the FLP and you could keep a List<> of the Labels with maybe a few meta data, like user, time etc..
Sounds like a good candidate for a ChatDisplay class to bundle the whole functionality!
Of course as the Labels are Controls you can add events to them as you like to communicate with the ChatDisplay or even with an outside communications object.. And the ChatDisplay class is free to implement whatever you need anyway. If necessary you can wrap the Labels in a ChatItem class, too.
Much more extensible than digging into a DGV to force it into doing things it was not meant to do..
Basically, Im making a paint application very similar to MSPaint.
The idea is that, that the the user clicks anywhere on the form and should be able to write text in a control. And then following that, that text should be displayed in g.drawstring graphic method.
I don't want to do the whole thing for you, but here is a basic outline of one way to accomplish the goals you outline. This is not necessarily the best way, but it should get you started and will introduce you to a number of WinForms concepts.
Writing the text
Create a Form and add a TextBox control to it. Make sure it is hidden by default. Override the OnMouseClick method of your Form and add code that checks if the TextBox is visible and if not, shows it and puts focus to it for the user to enter their text. If the TextBox is already visible, the code should hide it and create a new UserControl in its place that shows the text (see below for details of that UserControl).
Also add an event handler to the TextBox so that if the user hits Esc, it cancels the edit and if they hit Enter, the text is accepted and the UserControl is created.
Displaying the text
Create a UserControl and make sure that the UserPaint and Opaque styles are set in its construction (see SetStyle - you may also want to consider OptimizedDoubleBuffer and AllPaintingInWmPaint as this can reduce flickering though it does require extra paint code).
Override the OnPaint method in your UserControl and implement the code for drawing the string (remember, you'll also need a way to set the text on the control).
Conclusion
If you hook all that up, you should have something that appears to meet your requirements. For further experimentation, consider how you could remove the need for the UserControl. Good luck and have fun!
I want to implement a search box in a window form. In that window form, I have a few botton and a text box.
I want to support the use case when user enter a string in the search box and then we can find the that string and highlighted like firefox does. Is it hard to do this?
I googled and found this link that has the search box control. but I don't quite understand the code. If anyone is familiar with control.sendMessage, Could you please give me some help on understand that control.
here is the link:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/csharpgeneral/thread/a07c453a-c5dd-40ed-8895-6615cc808d91/
Thanks
There is no single WinForms or Windows control that provides this functionality. You need to break the problem down into parts:
1) Create a search box
I believe the link you give adds the "Search" cue to a textbox but doesn't add the search button(?) - if that is the case you'll want to combine the textbox with a new button in a user control.
SendMessage sends a message to a Windows control or Window. In this case it tells the textbox to display the "Search" cue. You need to do this because this behaviour is not exposed by the WinForms controls.
2) Work out how to highlight sections of the text
If you are just using the WinForms controls you'll need to use a RichTextBox control and work out how to change the background color at various points in the text.
I have a list box with Checkboxes in it. I want to prevent the Checkbox from changing its status if the user clicks on the text next to it. I only want it to change if the small box is clicked directly.
Is there any way to do this in windows forms?
Greetings and thanks in advance.
Place the text next to it in a Label, instead of the Text property of the Checkbox. Or you could create your own control which has a Checkbox and a Label. The Text property of the control would then fill the Text in the Label, and you could expose all of the Checkboxes regular properties in your control.
That's fairly non-standard behavior. Users are going to expect to be able to change the checkbox when clicking on its label, and are going to be frustrated, confused, and surprised when it doesn't work. I'd recommend not doing this. I'm not the only one.
(Yes, it's about web design, but many of the concepts are applicable in desktop application design as well.)
You could always not fill in the Text property of the Checkbox and make a completely separate Label control.
Otherwise, you will probably have to do explicit hit testing within the control to see if they hit the box or text. And then you will have to worry about checking the margins, which side the box is on, and other things that can change the position of the box.
I personally was only able to freeze things.
I freeze the check boxes by handling the Click and ItemChecked events,
and change the check state back, when it gets modified.
I use a menu to check/uncheck items and let user decide to use the menu or classic behave.
Cheers, good luck.