Toolstriptextbox does not release focus - c#

I have a winform with a toolstriptextbox where users can write some stuff. The problem is that the textbox does not release the focus using the following code:
this.ActiveControl = otherControl;
OR
otherControl.Focus();
It is very strange because I can still see the text cursor blinking in the toolstriptextbox (if I press some other key it will appear in it).
Does any one know how to remove the cursor of toolstriptextbox?
PD. The toolstriptextbox is the only textbox inside the form.
Regarding to the comments...
In fact there are not several controls in the form. Some buttons in the toolstrip, a splitterPanel and a couple of picture boxes. I tried to focus the picture boxes and the toolstrip but sometimes the form loses its handlers of events and the only way to solve this is to open or to focus any other app and go back(this restores the handlers). So far the only way to avoid that is to focus the splitterPanel. I do understand that theoretically the splitterPanel is not focusable, but that is the only workaround I have found.
Finaly when the splitterPanel is focused the initial behaviour occurs.
Thanks for your comments.

The following answer helpme to solve this problem: https://stackoverflow.com/a/1140277/2835505
What I did was to add an invisible label in the form. After the user is done updating the toolstriptextbox. I just focus on the new auxiliary label and it is done.
Thanks to all people who commented

Related

WPF TextBox events TextChanged PreviewTextInput do not fire

I have inherited an bigger C# Project from a college (hes gone so I can't ask him anymore). Im on VS2012 + .Net4.6
The first time in this Project I added a WPF Textbox to a nonmodal Window.
The problem is: I cant change the text in the TextBox.
What I found out are the following facts:
The TextBox is not readonly
I can use backspace- and delete key, no key else
contextmenu with Paste, Copy an Cut works like expected
If I open the window modal, I can change the text in the box
If I open den window nonmodal I can catch the events PreviewKeyUp, PreviewKeyDown, KeyUp and KeyDown
but I cant catch PreviewTextInput, TextInput (thats normal) and TextChanged.
When I create a WPF-Project from the scratch, everything works.
We have an own WPF-Window-Style, but it doesn't matter, if I use this style in the window or not.
Can anybody tell me whats the difference of the behavior of TextBoxes in modal / nonmodal Windows. Could you give me a tip, where I could look for a Modification of the behavior between the FromTheScratchProject and our project? Can I debug the eventhandling somehow?
Thank you a lot
It seems like your project is a mix of WinForms/Win32 and WPF.
If you instantiate your window in following way, your non-modal window will catch the keyboard events correctly:
Window wpfWindow = new Window();
ElementHost.EnableModelessKeyboardInterop(wpfWindow);
wpfWindow.Show();

How to set focus back to form, after button is pressed

I am making a game, and to open up and close the store, you press S. While in the store, you have six different choices to buy from, but they are all buttons.
However, once you buy something, the focus is no longer on the form, but on the button, and the key down event is part of the form, therefore, because the focus gets switched from the form to the button, the key down event no longer works, and disables you from closing the store and continuing on with the game.
My question is how to set the focus back to a form once a button is press? I started out with visual basic, and the code would be something along the lines of form1.setfocus, but its totally different in c#.
I have tried Activating the form, .focus, a lot, and nothing seems to be setting the focus back to the form. Help would be greatly appreciated.
Form1.focus();
But I think, to get keyboard events on Form itself, you need KeyPreview set to true for the Form so that Form gets Keys first and then other controls.
Try:
form.Focus();
MSDN:
The Focus method returns true if the control successfully received input focus. The control can have the input focus while not displaying any visual cues of having the focus. This behavior is primarily observed by the nonselectable controls listed below, or any controls derived from them.
Tell me more
You can add the key down event to the buttons too.

Windows form has focus but doesn't process keyboard events

I have a strange problem:
I have a Form that I open using ShowDialog(). The form is populated with some buttons and comboboxes. One of the comboboxes is set as the ActiveControl of the Form and the Form has focus.
What I want to accomplish is that the user can enter its username immediately after the Form opens (without the need to select the combobox first). However, if I press the keyboard, nothing happens. However, when I first click on the form with the mouse, and then enter something using the keyboard, it works. I already tried a lot of things like calling Select() and Focus() on the form. I even tried to simulate a mouseclick event (OnMouseClick) on the Form without any luck.
Someone has an idea would could be the problem here?
many thanks
Chris
Try BringToFront()
var f = new Form1();
f.Show();
f.BringToFront();
Then just use Select on that control
private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
comboBox1.Select();
}
Assuming you're running ShowDialog() from another form it might be worth changing it to: ShowDialog(this) so the new form has the correct parent and the correct blocking behaviour. Without the 'this' I've seen forms open up behind other forms and other strange behaviour, including focus problems.
Just a thought.
Have you tried calling myComboBox.Focus();
Just because the form has focus doesn't necessarily mean any control within the form has focus. Also try checking the onKey events of both the form and the individual controls. This normally helps me diagnose what exactly has focus. If the form itself and non on its controls are getting any onKey events then try using form.Activate();

Show/Hide ContextMenuStrip outside the form

I'm creating a simple clipboard manager application. It monitors the content of a clipboard. When a change occurs (throu the win api message loop) it fires up a method to capture current content of clipboard and creates new object called clipboarditem. Next its building a ContextMeuStrip which consits of several clipboarditems created previously. The items menu is accessed by a hotkey. It shows up this menu on certain position of the screen itemsMenu.Show(caretPosition);, with .Focus(), I want it to make it disappear after it loses the focus (eg. clicking somehwere else on the screen or switch applications by alt-tab). Found an event OnLoseFocus but I dont think its working properly because the menu wont even show up.
How to make ContextMenuStrip disappear after loosing focus and how to prevent from showing ContextMenuStrip in taskabr ?
Sorry for my language skills :)
From a very quick look at the events that ContextMenuStrip contains, have you tried the "MouseCaptureChanged" event? It may help you with the losing focus issue.
For the showing in the taskbar issue, have you set "ShowInTaskbar" to false on the form you have your ContextMenuStrip (if you have it on a form)?

Control.Enter event doesn't fire when switching tasks. Is there an alternative that does?

Rep steps:
create example .NET form application
put a TextBox on the form
wire a function up to the TextBox's Enter event
When you run this application, the Control.Enter event fires when focus first goes to the TextBox. However, if you click away into another application and then click back into the test application, the event will not fire again.
So moving between applications does not trigger Enter/Leave.
Is there another alternative Control-level event that I can use, which will fire in this scenario?
Ordinarily, I would use Form.Activated. Unfortunately, that is troublesome here because my component is hosted by a docking system that can undock my component into a new Form without notifying me.
What are you trying to do in the Enter event?
I can't find another control-level event that fires in your example program but when my test app does regain focus, the control that last had focus still has it.
Interesting question but it needs a little more context.
If I try your example and click outside the control on another window, desktop, etc, I can get the Got and Lost Focus events to fire, but if you're only trying to click within a form or a control with only 1 control, these event will never be fired because it is the only thing to focus on. Neither will Entered or left, unless you change the dynamics or overload the controls, you cannot get this to happen
In your example, I think you need another control. The reason being is that the first control (tabIndex 0) is the one with focus. With no other control to switch focus to, this control will always be focused, and therefore can never be entered. Switching to another application or form will not change the focus or active control in this form so when you return you will still not get the event fired.
With added controls control.entered should work fine. If this is your only control, why not call the event on formLoad, or TextChanged, when the form gets focus?
Thanks, I'll give some background.
My control is a UserControl that contains a grid and a toolbar. A user will typically launch several of these controls to view different slices of the system's data.
There are several keyboards shortcuts that can launch actions from the selected row in the current grid. However, it is a requirement that these keyboard shortcuts should apply not only to the currently focused grid. If the user is currently focused on one of the many other areas of the application, then this keyboard shortcut should still work, and it should be routed to the last focused grid.
So I wired a function to the Control.Enter event of my UserControl to basically say LastFocusedGrid = this.
And it would work, except for the docking and undocking...
See, these controls are hosted inside an application with docking features, somewhat similar to visual studio.
By default, the control launches as a tab within the main working area of the application, similar to the way a source file opens in visual studio.
However, the user can "rip out" a tab by grabbing the tab header and dragging it out of the main application. At this point, the application creates a new "float form" to host the control. Switching between the main application and this float form is the same as switching between apps, for the purposes of the Control.Enter and Form.Activated events.
At that point we have the "one control within a form" scenario simulated with the example application described in the original post.
Now, there are some ways around this. I could leverage the Form.Activated event, which DOES fire when switching between forms. If you add an event in the test application to the Form's Activated event, you will see that it works great.
The problem is that my UserControl's relationship with its parent Form is fluid, making the solution somewhat complicated. I tried wiring up to "this.ParentForm.Activated" which worked okay. The problem is when do you call this? What happens when you are undocked/redocked? I ended up with a nasty bunch of code with things like "previousParentForm" so that I could unhook from the old form, and then I was still facing the problem that the docking system doesn't notify me when my parent Form is being changed, so I was going to have to make a bunch of changes there, too.
These problems are not unsolvable, but if there is a simpler control-level "parent form was activated" event, then that would be a lot more elegant.
That's rather long, but I hope it clarifies the situation.
So when creating your grid, can you not set the KeyPressed, or KeyUp, etc. event? If so, all the grids can make use of the same event handler. Just make sure that when you get into the event handler to do something like:
Grid currentGrid = (Grid)sender;
Then you should be able to apply that block of code to any grid that gets sent in without having to worry about keeping track.
Since all the event handler really is, it's location is a mute point really as long as everything you need to execute it is accessible.
Frye, the problem is that the keyboard shortcuts should work no matter where the user is in the application. They are gloabl commands, handled at the top level, and then routed to the "last focused grid."
So handling the keystrokes at the grid level will not help.
To be more specific, assume user launches grids A, B, and C. But he also launches other controls X, Y, and Z that have nothing to do with my code.
User clicks on A, then on C. Then he clicks on Y, then on Z. With focus on Z, he hits my keyboard shortcut. In this case, grid C should respond since it was the last grid the user was focused in.
It sounds like the issue that you're having is not directly related to the Enter event and more to the point, if you have controls "that have nothing to do with your code" then you really aren't looking at a control level event.
Guess I wasn't clear.
My control lives in a container application. So do other unrelated controls by other teams. Think of it like visual studio -- my control is the code editing tab, but there is also the pending changes list and the properties window, which cohabitate with the source files but aren't directly related.
The keyboard shortcut is handled by the container application. Then it should be routed to the last one of my controls that the user was focused on.
Maintaing this "LastFocusedGrid" reference is what I do in the Enter event.
If you want to see similar functionality at work in visual studio, try this:
open a few source files
navigate to the "Start Page" tab.
Hit Ctrl-F and search "current document" for some string
Notice that the serach feature auto-navigates to the LAST FOCUSED source file to perform the search.
So even though you weren't focused in the source file, the ctrl-F command was processed by visual studio and routed to the last focused source file tab.
Now try the same thing with Ctrl-G. It doesn't work unless you are focused directly in the source file.
My keyboard commands need to work like Ctrl-F here, not like Ctrl-G. That is why I don't just capture the keyboard events directly in my control.
Does that clarify or make things worse?
Have you tried just a simple Control.GotFocus?
in this example if you toggle between clicking the textboxes neither the enter or got focus will do as expected, however if you click the child forms instead both will behave as expected.
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Windows.Forms;
namespace EnterBrokenExample
{
static class Program
{
/// <summary>
/// The main entry point for the application.
/// </summary>
[STAThread]
static void Main()
{
Application.EnableVisualStyles();
Application.SetCompatibleTextRenderingDefault(false);
Form Form1 = new Form();
Form c1 = new Form();
Form c2 = new Form();
Form1.IsMdiContainer = true;
c1.MdiParent = Form1;
c2.MdiParent = Form1;
c1.Show();
c2.Show();
TextBox tb1 = new TextBox();
c1.Controls.Add(tb1);
tb1.Enter += ontbenter;
tb1.Text = "Some Text";
tb1.GotFocus += ongotfocus;
TextBox tb2 = new TextBox();
c2.Controls.Add(tb2);
tb2.Enter += ontbenter;
tb2.Text = "some other text";
tb2.GotFocus += ongotfocus;
Application.Run(Form1);
}
static void ontbenter(object sender, EventArgs args)
{
if (!(sender is TextBox))
return;
TextBox s = (TextBox)sender;
s.SelectAll();
}
static void ongotfocus(object sender, EventArgs args)
{
if (!(sender is TextBox))
return;
TextBox s = (TextBox)sender;
s.SelectAll();
}
}
}

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