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WinForms Container to display a single child

I'm looking for a container that can display content, however I'd like to avoid using e.g panel, having to clear/add child. Is there a control that fits the description or would I need to create a custom container ( using e.g the mentioned panel ), exposing some "Content" property, handling the logic within there?

Every WinForms control has "children, not child" -- the Controls property is introduced on the base Control class, so every control has a collection of children.
WPF behaves more like what you're looking for; the only WPF controls that can have multiple children are those that do specific layouts, and everything else has one child (or none).
Nothing like that exists in WinForms.

"Global" control visible on multiple pages?

I have this progressbar control which i would like to be visible on several pages of my application. How to i create a "global" control like this?
Thanks
/Richard

A few questions:
What do you mean by global?
Would you like to create one instance
of your progressbar and share it?
What kind of control do you use? Is it UserControl?
Are you aware of this toolkit?
If not:
I assume that app shows the progressbar when user is downloading or app is doing work in background. Make a Popup to show it to the user. You can put it in the Resources Dictionary, and then dynamicly add it to visual tree. But wont gain any advantage.
It is not a good idea to have one control if your app is based on default navigation system(pages). I strongly advise you to use progressbar form the toolkit. Simply create an instance for each page.

You can't. But you could create a page which includes this progressbar and then show/hide/etc. as necessary.

There are two options for doing this:
a) create a Popup element in code without making it part of the element tree and assign your control as child of that Popup. Then use IsOpen=true to show it.
b) retemplate the PhoneApplicationFrame that is the root of your element tree and insert your global elements in the part of the template that is shared across all pages.

How to implement a-form-inside-a-form with runtime embedded forms switching?

I need to implement TabControl-like behaviour with manual (on event, on a button click for example) pages switching and having all pages designed and implemented as separate forms. A form to be incorporated (as a panel control) inside main form and replaced by another form as needed.
How to achieve this?
PS: The reason why I don't want to use TabControl instead is because there are going to be too many tabs - I'd prefer to present the list of them as a TreeView and instantiate on demand. The another reason comes from another project of mine - there I am going to implement plug-ins, where a panel inside main window will be provided by a class loaded dynamically and will be runtime-switchable.

I need to implement TabControl-like behaviour with manual (on event, on a button click for example) pages switching and having all pages designed and implemented as separate forms
May I ask why this is a requirement? It seems like the logical approach would be to create a set of UserControls. You can place a UserControl in a form, and you can place a UserControl in a tab. You get modularity without the headache of implementing a very odd requirement which is a use case that the API developers obviously did not think was valid. I just can't think of a good reason to take the route you have suggested.

I did similar thing once, and for that reason, I have ReplaceControl method, which I paste below:
static public void ReplaceControl(Control ToReplace, Form ReplaceWith) {
ReplaceWith.TopLevel=false;
ReplaceWith.FormBorderStyle=FormBorderStyle.None;
ReplaceWith.Show();
ReplaceWith.Anchor=ToReplace.Anchor;
ReplaceWith.Dock=ToReplace.Dock;
ReplaceWith.Font=ToReplace.Font;
ReplaceWith.Size=ToReplace.Size;
ReplaceWith.Location=ToReplace.Location;
ToReplace.Parent.Controls.Add(ReplaceWith);
ToReplace.Visible=false;
}
Only thing left to do is to create some control manually on the form, as the placeholder for your Form. Use label, for example.

You could do this with an MDIForm as the main form, and then plain-old Forms as the separate forms. Or you could encapsulate each element's functionality as a UserControl which you can then swap out on your form in code.
The advantage of encapsulating your UI elements as UserControls is that if, for whatever reason, you need them to become forms in your application, you can just drop the UserControl on a form.
Update: Since you want to use a TreeView to select what the user is looking at, you definitely want to do this as a bunch of UserControls. The layout is simple: TreeView on the left, and whichever control is active on the right.
There's no need to justify not using a TabControl - tabs are the worst UI element in history.

WinForms designer: Add control and make it visible for the designer

I have a WinForms user control Host with a custom UI Editor.
Through that editor, a child control (Child) can be added to Host.
(The UI Editor creates Child and sets Child.Parent = Host)
Child is handled through a Holder<Child> helper class, which is set as Tag property of e.g. a ListViewItem.
The respective code - some of it, at least - gets added to the form: Holder is created, and set as Tag, which is enough to be created at runtime, too.
However, Child is not visible to the designer - it is displayed, but it can't be selected, nor does it occur in the drop down list with controls for the parent form.
I would like to:
see the Child control in the designer, so that I can modify properties
get notified if the control is removed
Is this possible?
[edit] Thanks all for your input. I've decided to skip the designer - I hoped to throw together something quickly, but apparently it requires more planning than I should allow myself to spend on it right now.

Usethis.Controls.Add(/*Instance of the child*/); on the host class. Then for the notification add event handler for the host's ControlRemoved event (this.ControlRemoved += new ControlEventHandler(Host_ControlRemoved);).

I can't say I fully understand exactly what you are trying to do.
If you are dealing with the problem of how a "child" Control of a UserControl placed on a Form at Design-Time can be made to function as a container onto which you can drag-and-drop other controls from the Toolbox : this CodeProject article by Henry Minute may be helpful : Designing Nested Controls. For example : you have a UserControl with a Panel inside it : an instance of the UserControl is placed on a Form : in the Design-time view of the Form : you want to be able to drag-drop controls onto the Panel in the UserControl and have them become child controls of the Panel : Henry's article will show you how to do that.
This from Microsoft : How to make a UserControl object acts as a control container design-time by using Visual C#
Perhaps might also be useful, although it seems like you already have this step accomplished.

WPF - Dynamic tooltip

I have a class ToolTipProvider
which has a method
string GetToolTip(UIElement element)
which will return a specific tooltip for the UIElement specified, based on various factors including properties of the UIElement itself and also looking up into documentation which can be changed dynamically. It will also probably run in a thread so when the form first fires up the tooltips will be something like the visual studio 'Document cache is still being constructed', then populated in the background.
I want to allow this to be used in any wpf form with the minimum effort for the developer. Essentially I want to insert an ObjectDataProvider resource into the Window.Resources to wrap my ToolTipProvider object, then I think I need to create a tooltip (called e.g. MyToolTipProvider) in the resources which references that ObjectDataProvider, then on any element which requires this tooltip functionality it would just be a case of ToolTip="{StaticResource MyToolTipProvider}"
however I can't work out a) how to bind the actual elemnt itself to the MethodParameters of the objectdataprovider, or b) how to force it to call the method each time the tooltip is opened.
Any ideas/pointers on the general pattern I need? Not looking for complete solution, just any ideas from those more experienced

Create a new user control which functions as a tool-tip view factory.
Use your control as the tool-tip, passing any data you need for the factory to your control using binding (e.g. the data, the containing control, ...)
<AnyControl>
<AnyControl.ToolTip>
<YourToolTipControl Content="{Binding}" />
</AnyControl.ToolTip>
</AnyControl>

Not calling myself an expert, but I'd probably attempt such a feature with an attached property. This would be attachable to any element in your UI and you can specify an event handler that gets access to the object to which the property is being attached as well as the value passed to the attached property. You can keep a reference to the element to which your attached property was attached and you would then be able to change the ToolTip whenever you want.