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C# Button Tabs Hide Controls Winform

Hey so I am attempting to create a form in which there are two buttons (acting as tabs) on the side in which when one is pressed specific controls are shown and when the other is pressed, another set are shown.
I have gotten this to work very well however I have run into an issue when about to create my second set of controls, how am I going to draw them (in designer) ontop of current controls (it's fine during runtime)? So my question is, how can I make this work. Current (possibly) important code:
private void CheatButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
CheatControls(true);
ColorControls(false);
CheatButton.Normalcolor = Color.FromArgb(51, 51, 51);
ColorButton.Normalcolor = Color.FromArgb(61, 61, 61);
}
private void ColorButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
CheatControls(false);
ColorControls(true);
CheatButton.Normalcolor = Color.FromArgb(61, 61, 61);
ColorButton.Normalcolor = Color.FromArgb(51, 51, 51);
}
private void CheatControls(bool b)
{
TriggerSwitch.Visible = b;
TriggerLabel.Visible = b;
BhopSwitch.Visible = b;
BhopLabel.Visible = b;
GlowSwitch.Visible = b;
GlowLabel.Visible = b;
RecoilSwitch.Visible = b;
RecoilLabel.Visible = b;
}
private void ColorControls(bool c)
{
}
My windows form application with an understandable graphic

Put all your cheat controls in a custom UserControl and all your color controls in a different custom UserControl. You can edit the different control sets easily in the designer, and in your code you can hide/show them more easily by setting the appropriate UserControl's visibility rather than setting the visibility of a bunch of controls individually. Here's an (admittedly old) example of creating a UserControl: msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa302342.aspx
When you create a UserControl in Visual Studio, you can add the controls to it using the designer. In your form with the tab buttons, you would add instances of the two UserControls that you created. Since UserControl derives from Control, it has a Visible property. So, in your CheatControls(bool b) method, your implementation would be simplified to something like _myCheatControls.Visible = b;. I haven't watched the whole thing, but this video might help, too: youtube.com/watch?v=l5L_q_jI494

You can use
XanderUI
Simply add a SuperButton(acts as a tab button) and when its clicked show a panel with your controls in it
EG -
private void ShowControlSet(int ControlSet)
{
panel1.visible = false;
panel2.visible = false;
if (ControlSet == 1) panel1.visible = true;
if (ControlSet == 2) panel2.visible = true;
}
// To show a panel use
ShowControlSet(1);
Your also able to use BringToFront() instead of making each panel invisible / visible but you need to anchor or dock the panels correctly

asides the visibility, what you can do is get the position of the buttons and st them when hiding and showing the other buttons
just set the top and left positions, ensuring the buttons are the same size.

Customizing default inputs?

I wonder if it's possible to customize my C# application (winforms) to get a better design, I made a PSD (photoshop document) so I can generate png jpeg... pictures if I need them.
Example of a form like the one I want :

Indeed as it was pointed out in the comments, it is easy to use WPF (indows Presentation Foundation) to achieve that result, but if you really need that it must be made in windows forms I can help you with that...
ControlBox and Border
It seens that your form does not have a control box (minimize, maximize and close buttons)
to achieve that you can set
form.FormBorderStyle = System.Windows.Forms.FormBorderStyle.None
I'm not sure if that galaxy behind your form is part of the application so i'll be considering that it is not
To achieve that irregular shape of the form we have to do a workaround here
Irregular Shape of the Form
we are going to set a Color to TransparentKey, so everything in the form in that specific color will be transparent, like it does not exists (if you click in that part it will go into de desktop or whatever application you have behind in your form)
So let's use a specific color which we will probably dont use in the form
form.TransparencyKey = Color.FromArgb(111, 111, 111); //You can do it by the editor
So in order to make that white part we are going to use an Panel and a PictureBox outsite of the Panel trying to copy the shape of your image
Stylized Inputs
To make it easier and reusable I'm going to make a userControl in this one
the usercontrol will have
a Panel called HighLightPanel, its dock property will be set to Fill
a Panel called BackColorPanel, it will be inside the HighLightPanel
a PictureBox called InputPicture, its dock property will be set to Left, it will be inside BackColorPanel and its acessor will be public
a TextBox called TextBox, its dock property wil be set to fill, it will be inside BackColorPanel, the BorderStyle Property set to None, you should set the size and font you most desize in this one, I'm going to use Segoe UI; 15,75pt and its acessor will be public
Now we have to make some properties in our UserControl to make it work without work in other controls
First in the SizeChanged event of the HighLightPanel we will make the BackColorPanel be exacly two points smaller in every direction and its position to 1;1 so we can see the HighLightPanel
private void HighlightPanel_SizeChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
this.BackColorPanel.Size = new Size(
HighlightPanel.Width - 2,
HighlightPanel.Height - 2);
}
Now we will create two propertys to handle the Highlight Color
public Color HighlightBorderColor { get; set; }
public Color NonHighlightBorderColor { get; set; }
And in the Enter and Leave Property of our TextBox we are going to change the HighlightPanel
private void TextBox_Enter(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
HighlightPanel.BackColor = HighlightBorderColor;
}
private void TextBox_Leave(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
HighlightPanel.BackColor = NonHighlightBorderColor;
}
So now every time the user enter the Input it will appear that the Input has an Border in the specified Color
Now to enhance its usability to developers we will make some wrappers in its controls to be easier change property of child controls in the editor
public Image InputImage
{
get { return InputPicture.Image; }
set { InputPicture.Image = value; }
}
public PictureBoxSizeMode InputImageLayout
{
get { return InputPicture.SizeMode; }
set { InputPicture.SizeMode = value; }
}
public char PasswordCharacter
{
get { return TextBox.PasswordChar; }
set { TextBox.PasswordChar = value; }
}
public bool ShowInputImage
{
get { return InputPicture.Visible; }
set { InputPicture.Visible = value; }
}
In the InputImage set the picture you want for the User and the Key
Insert the two controls in the position you like
Position of the Form
if you want your form to be moveable without the border you will have to use this snippet, it is more easy in WPF
#region MoveForm
Point LastPoint;
bool ShouldMove;
private void form_MouseDown(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
{
LastPoint = e.Location;
ShouldMove = true;
this.TransparencyKey = Color.FromArgb(111, 111, 111);
}
private void form_MouseUp(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
{
ShouldMove = false;
}
private void form_MouseMove(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
{
if (ShouldMove)
{
this.Location = new Point(
this.Location.X - LastPoint.X + e.X,
this.Location.Y - LastPoint.Y + e.Y);
}
}
#endregion

If you need a lot of special graphics effects learning WPF will indeed be a sound investement.
If all you want is that login screen, it is trivial in Winforms and doesn't take any horrible hacks as you've been told..
this.FormBorderStyle = System.Windows.Forms.FormBorderStyle.None;
this.BackColor = System.Drawing.Color.LavenderBlush;
this.TransparencyKey = System.Drawing.Color.LavenderBlush;
this.ControlBox = false;
this.MaximizeBox = false;
this.MinimizeBox = false;
this.Text= "";
These seven lines are all it takes for a form to be transparent. I copied them from the Designer code; you can simply set the 7 Properties in the property grid.
Now add a panel, dock it to the bottom and give it the right color; add a picturebox and your other controls and you are set.
To create the two input groups you also need just a few regular controls and only a few simple lines of code:
You place one Panel, BorderStyle = FixedSingle; and add a Label and a TextBox to it. The Label has AutoSize = False; and both ImageAlign and TextAlign are set to MiddleLeft. You assign an image to the Label's Image and prefix the Text with enough blanks to not overlap. Obviously you should define a PasswordChar for the 2nd TextBox. Now all you need is to script the Enter and Leave events to change the BackColor of the respective Panels between, say SystemColors.Control and SystemColors.MenuHighlight. Size the Labels to almost fill the Panels and you are done. Less code than the WPF version, I'd bet.
If you need such input an controls again and again, simply create Usercontrols for each type you need!
Here is an example of the limits you will hit: Wouldn't it be nice to add a dropshadow effect to the image? It is doable in Winforms. But it would involve painting that effect; this would take at least 15 or 20 lines of involved code instead of simply turning the effect on with (estimated) 1-3 simple lines.
Do you need any nice hover effects? Not easy, to say the least..
These limits will be all over the place, so it really depends on how fancy your requirements will get.
Maybe you should use this example as a starter to compare the two techniques and to warm you up to WPF?

Multiple Pages withing one Form? C#

I haven't done this for a while so am not quite sure how to do what I need, but I am sure it is pretty simple.
Basically, I have a form with a navigation pane. I want to make it so when a user clicks a button on that pane, say 'Home' it changes the content on the form, but doesn't actually switch to another form, if you get me?
As in, I would like the navigation pane to stay as it is the entire time and I only want the content of the form to change. It is almost like the 'TabControl' tool in Visual Studio's 'Toolbox' although instead of the tabs being directly above the content, I want them to be buttons displayed in a side pane. See the image below for a better understanding. Thanks!
(Side pane, and header stays the same regardless on what button is pressed, but the content changes.)

I'd implement this using UserControls. One UserControl is shown when a button is clicked. I'd create an interface (for example IView) that would be implemented by each UserControl that declares common functionality, like for example a method to check whether you can switch from one to another (like a form's OnClosing event) like this:
public interface IView
{
bool CanClose();
}
public UserControl View1: IView
{
public bool CanClose()
{
...
}
}
public UserControl View2: IView
{
public bool CanClose()
{
...
}
}
Then, switching views is quite easy:
private bool CanCurrentViewClose()
{
if (groupBox1.Controls.Count == 0)
return true;
IView v = groupBox1.Controls[0] as IView;
return v.CanClose();
}
private void SwitchView(IView newView)
{
if (groupBox1.Controls.Count > 0)
{
UserControl oldView = groupBox1.Controls[0] as UserControl;
groupBox1.Controls.Remove(oldView);
oldView.Dispose();
}
groupBox1.Controls.Add(newView);
newView.Dock = Dock.Fill;
}
In a button you could do this:
private void btnHome_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
if (CanCurrentViewClose())
{
ViewHome v = new ViewHome();
// Further initialization of v here
SwitchView(v);
}
else
{
MessageBox.Show("Current View can not close!");
}
}
I've successfully used this approach on many occasions.

Simplest way is to place multiple Panels as content holders, implement content manager which keeps references to Panels and with it show/hide desired panel.
Simple, but for smaller apps it will work

You can simply use a TabControl which has as many TabPages as you want. For the TabControl you can set the Alignment property to Left

sub-class of Control that combines multiple Controls

I'm trying to extend TextBox to add a Label to the left of it and treat it as one Control so I don't have to keep track of both of their sizes, locations, etc.
I've created a TextBoxWithLabel class that extends Control and has TextBox and Label fields, but I'm not really sure what to do for onPaint() - do I have to tell it to manually draw both items? If so, how? I'm guessing the default inherited behaviour doesn't go so far as 'check if I contain any child Controls and if I do, draw them'...
Is this even the best way to do it? I previously had my class extend TextBox and just added the Label field, but of course that didn't get added to the Panel containing the TextBoxWithLabel and so wasn't drawn.
Any suggestions or pokes in the right direction appreciated.
Thanks,
Alex

The typical approach here is a UserControl in which you put both the label and the text box. It is painful though, you have to add a lot of the properties and events of the text box to the user control so it at least resembles a text box. Ugly boilerplate code.
Another way to do it is to make a custom text box that sneaks in a label control on the parent. That completely behaves like a TextBox without having to do any work. Add a new class to your project and paste the code shown below. Compile. Drop the new control from the top of the toolbox onto your form. Set the Description property to the text you want to see appear in the label.
using System;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Windows.Forms;
class MyTextBox : TextBox {
private Label label;
public MyTextBox() {
label = new Label();
label.AutoSize = true;
label.Font = this.Font;
label.Location = this.Location;
label.Resize += new EventHandler(label_Resize);
}
protected override void OnParentChanged(EventArgs e) {
// Keeps label on the same parent as the text box
base.OnParentChanged(e);
label.Parent = this.Parent; // NOTE: no dispose necessary
}
private void moveLabel() {
// Keep label right-aligned to the left of the text box
label.Location = new Point(this.Left - label.Width - 10, this.Top);
}
private void label_Resize(object sender, EventArgs e) {
moveLabel();
}
protected override void OnLocationChanged(EventArgs e) {
base.OnLocationChanged(e);
moveLabel();
}
public string Description {
get { return label.Text; }
set { label.Text = value; }
}
public override Font Font {
get { return base.Font; }
set { base.Font = label.Font = value; }
}
}

Did you consider using a UserControl? The benefit of a usercontrol is that you can easily put your label and textbox with correct relative positioning.

Custom Control - An extension to an existing control
User Control - A composition of multiple existing controls
Choose your candidate.

Why is text in TextBox highlighted (selected) when form is displayed?

I have a form containing a TextBox in C# which I set to a string as follows:
textBox.Text = str;
When the form is displayed, why does the text in the texbox appear highlighted/selected?

The text box has a TabIndex of 0 and TabStop set to true. This means that the control will be given focus when the form is displayed.
You can either give another control the 0 TabIndex (if there is one) and give the text box a different tab index (>0), or set TabStop to false for the text box to stop this from happening.

The default behavior of a TextBox in Windows Forms is to highlight all of the text if it gets focused for the first time by tabbing into it, but not if it is clicked into. We can see this in Reflector by looking at the TextBox's OnGotFocus() override:
protected override void OnGotFocus(EventArgs e)
{
base.OnGotFocus(e);
if (!this.selectionSet)
{
this.selectionSet = true;
if ((this.SelectionLength == 0) && (Control.MouseButtons == MouseButtons.None))
{
base.SelectAll();
}
}
}
It's that if statement that is causing the behavior that we don't like. Furthermore, to add insult to injury, the Text property's setter blindly resets that selectionSet variable whenever the text is re-assigned:
public override string Text
{
get
{
return base.Text;
}
set
{
base.Text = value;
this.selectionSet = false;
}
}
So if you have a TextBox and tab into it, all the text will be selected. If you click into it, the highlight is removed, and if you re-tab into it, your caret position (and selection length of zero) is preserved. But if we programmatically set new Text, and tab into the TextBox again, then all of the text will be selected again.
If you are like me and find this behavior annoying and inconsistent, then there are two ways around this problem.
The first, and probably the easiest, is to simply trigger the setting of selectionSet by calling DeselectAll() on form Load() and whenever the Text changes:
protected override void OnLoad(EventArgs e)
{
base.OnLoad(e);
this.textBox2.SelectionStart = this.textBox2.Text.Length;
this.textBox2.DeselectAll();
}
(DeselectAll() just sets SelectionLength to zero. It's actually SelectionStart that flips the TextBox's selectionSet variable. In the above case, the call to DeselectAll() is not necessary since we are setting the start to the end of the text. But if we set it to any other position, like the start of the text, then calling it is a good idea.)
The more permanent way is to create our own TextBox with the desired behavior through inheritance:
public class NonSelectingTextBox : TextBox
{
// Base class has a selectionSet property, but its private.
// We need to shadow with our own variable. If true, this means
// "don't mess with the selection, the user did it."
private bool selectionSet;
protected override void OnGotFocus(EventArgs e)
{
bool needToDeselect = false;
// We don't want to avoid calling the base implementation
// completely. We mirror the logic that we are trying to avoid;
// if the base implementation will select all of the text, we
// set a boolean.
if (!this.selectionSet)
{
this.selectionSet = true;
if ((this.SelectionLength == 0) &&
(Control.MouseButtons == MouseButtons.None))
{
needToDeselect = true;
}
}
// Call the base implementation
base.OnGotFocus(e);
// Did we notice that the text was selected automatically? Let's
// de-select it and put the caret at the end.
if (needToDeselect)
{
this.SelectionStart = this.Text.Length;
this.DeselectAll();
}
}
public override string Text
{
get
{
return base.Text;
}
set
{
base.Text = value;
// Update our copy of the variable since the
// base implementation will have flipped its back.
this.selectionSet = false;
}
}
}
You maybe tempted to just not call base.OnGotFocus(), but then we would lose useful functionality in the base Control class. And you might be tempted to not mess with the selectionSet nonsense at all and simply deselect the text every time in OnGotFocus(), but then we would lose the user's highlight if they tabbed out of the field and back.
Ugly? You betcha. But it is what it is.

The answers to this question helped me a lot with a similar problem, but the simple answer is only hinted at with a lot of other complex suggestions. Just set SelectionStart to 0 after setting your Text. Problem solved!
Example:
yourtextbox.Text = "asdf";
yourtextbox.SelectionStart = 0;

You can also choose the tab order for your form's controls by opening:
View->Tab Order
Note that this option is only available in "View" if you have the Form design view open.
Selecting "Tab Order" opens a view of the Form which allows you to choose the desired tab order by clicking on the controls.

To unhighlight a text field, with VS 2013, try init with:
myTextBox.GotFocus += new System.EventHandler(this.myTextBox_GotFocus);
And add the method:
public void myTextBox_GotFocus(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
myTextBox.SelectionLength=0;
}

I haven't tested this on C# but I ran into the same issue using a C++ WIN32 dialog box. Is seems like you can change the behavior by returning FALSE from OnInitDialog() or WM_INITDIALOG. Hope this helps.

Here is what worked for me
public void SetNotes(string notes)
{
notesTextBox.Text = notes;
notesTextBox.Select();
notesTextBox.SelectionLength = 0;
notesTextBox.SelectionStart = notes.Length;//place cursor at end of text
}