I have a winforms tab control which has several tab pages. Within each tab page controls (textboxes, radio buttons, etc...) are group into groupboxes. These group boxes are arranged from top to bottom but in some occassions some groupboxes needs to be visible and other ones to be hidden. Also control within each group box sometimes (depending on the scenario) needs to be visible and sometimes hidden. So I would like to know if someone knows a good approach to do this, maybe some kind of pattern if any. Also it would be good to implement a generic solution to do this. Could any expert in GUI guide me in the right direction to do this?
Using C# and dot NET Framework 4.0, WinForms. This is a desktop application, not Web-based.
You can define the scenarios in a class then add another class that will manage the layout by reading the scenario and laying the elements based on the scenario. I have not provided details because it varies on how specific you want to be and what behavior you want to achieve. It is better to put the Widgets inside a User Control and let that user control communicate with the layout manager.You can use the Mediator pattern or variation of it to coordinate between the widgets. Hope this helps.
I usually try to group related controls into UserControls (even if this means doubling up on some controls) and adding them to or removing them from the form as needed. An example of this could be payment methods - when the user selects a specific payment method (Credit Card, Cash, Cheque, etc) a UserControl with the correct elements is displayed within a panel on the form.
A good pattern to use when managing this sort of set up is Model-View-Presenter, in the example, all the UserControls would probably implement an IPaymentMethod view interface and provide a way to update the corresponding models.
Related
I am attempting to create a WinForms application which allows the user to display and edit data stored in a MSSQL database. The data being altered is hierarchical, and within a single level of the hierarchy the properties which may be altered are identical; in other words the controls for a single level of the hierarchy are the same, but they may differ from other levels.
I am trying to create the application in such a way that there is only a single form with controls that update based on the hierarchical level of the item being viewed by the user. I realize this is possible by putting all the controls for all levels on a single form and updating their 'Visible' property, but that method makes design of the form difficult due to clutter... Have any of you found a more elegant/less ugly solution?
If you want to do this in WinForms, you can take advantage of the fact that visibility and enabled-ness are both "heritable" traits in the Windows model.
In other words, if you group all of your controls within a parent container (such a Panel or UserControl), then disable that container control and make it invisible, all of its child controls will also become likewise disabled and invisible.
I recommend creating UserControls for each level of the hierarchy. The line of thinking is pretty much the same as if you used separate Forms, except that they're not actually separate Forms. Multiple UserControl objects can be displayed on a single form, so you can have as many as you need. This keeps all related controls together, which makes management much easier. You can also interact individually with these UserControls in the WinForms designer, just like they were separate Forms, solving the "clutter" problem.
To toggle between "active" hierarchies, loop through all of your UserControl objects. Make the currently "active" one enabled and visible (all of its children will automatically become likewise). Make the rest of them disabled and hidden (and all of their children will automatically become likewise).
I won't argue with HighCore here, though. If you don't already know WinForms, you could just as easily spend your time learning WPF. If you decide to do so and want to know how to accomplish this same task in that UI framework, please be sure to ask a new question.
I am putting together a winforms project and I was thinking of using user controls with one form. For example, having a user control for customer lists, customer detail, product list, product detail, etc.
If this is a good idea, if the user is moving from one screen to another do you just make the user control visible = false or do you null it out?
It seems like you are grouping like functionality so I do not think you have to many. Some of the projects that I have done have had pages with a large amount of resources I converted those to usercontrols and I create each time I show them, otherwise if they are relativly lightweight changing their visibility will work fine. It all boils down to what you are trying to accomplish.
I'm building a C# client app that allows a user to communicate with one or more existing users in a system via an email-like metaphor. I'd like to present the user with a text entry box that auto-completes on known email addresses, and allows multiple delimiter-separated addresses to be entered. Ideally, I'd also like the email addresses to turn into structured controls once they've been entered and recognized. Basically, I'm modeling the UI interaction for adding users after Facebook's model.
Are there any Windows Forms controls out there with the ability to do something like this? Is there any well-established terminology for a hybrid textbox / control list box (no, not a ComboBox) or something that I should be searching for?
Thanks,
-Patrick
I have had good luck in the past creating composite user-controls to provide specific functionality using native .NET Winforms controls. It works pretty good as long as there aren't too many of them, in which case things start to slow down.
In you case, and this is just off the top of my head, but, perhaps you could take a FlowLayoutPanel, a Button, and a Textbox which supports auto-complete and put these together to create a control that would provide the functionality you are looking for.
If there are no addresses selected in the control (e.g. in a List<string>), then the container (FlowLayoutPanel) would only display the TextBox. Once the user selected an entry, the control would automatically create a Button with the appropriate caption and insert it to the left in the FlowLayoutPanel. If the user removes an address he/she has already selected, simply remove its representation (the button) from the FlowLayoutPanel, and the TextBox can resize accordingly. There may be issues with getting the TextBox to fill up the remaining space (I can't remember how to do that), but you get the idea. The container does not have to be FlowLayoutPanel - you could use a Panel with Docked controls, or even a TableLayoutPanel for this.
A design as I described would allow the user to delete the address by clicking on the button. However, without some other visual cues, that isn't very intuitive or user-friendly, so I would consider making the "Button" be another composite control which contains a "prettied-up" label along with an tiny delete Button (X) to the right. For this you could use a Panel control and dock the X button to the right, and fill the Label on the left. You would provide public properties here as needed to control the text and provide an event handler or callback for the delete functionality.
Once the visual stuff is working, all that is left is to provide the appropriate Properties and Methods on the main control to allow it to interact as needed with outside code.
As a simple, "poor man's", implementation you could take a look at the AutoComplete* properties of the TextBox control. You could dynamically populate the AutoCompleteSource with your known addresses and when an entry matches, add to a separate, list-style control of your choice.
See this SO article for some interesting code snippets related to your question, and my suggested workaround.
Beyond the built-in AUtoComplete properties you're probably looking at having to purchase a 3rd party control from a tools vendor.
I've not seen anything like that before in WinForms. In WPF it would be another matter - if you can use that, maybe consider hosting a WPF control within your WinForms application instead?
I think you're trying to do something similar to this codeproject article: AutoComplete TextBox
And since you mention WPF in a comment, you also have this article: WPF AutoComplete Folder TextBox (should be easy enough to cut out the folder bit of the article I'd thought).
Well, there isn't such a control. If I were you, I'd create 2 textboxes to do the job. See, a normal textbox can easily be configured for autocomplete from a list, even dynamically; however, it accepts only one entry at a time.
So, I suggest you dedicate one textbox for autocomplete, and one for the addresses. So, whenever there is a qualified email address in the first textbox, and you click enter, the address gets added to the address textbox, and automatically add delimitation.
Then you need to handle the addresses in the address textbox as objects instead of characters. Code it in a way that when a user tries to delete a character in an address, the whole address is deleted.
This is the workaround I can think of. I'll help with the code if you give it a try.
All in WPF:
Developing a wizard application, user has to answer a number of simple questions before brought to the main app. The main app is then prefilled with the information obtained from the wizard.
I started with a Window which I then planned to add usercontrols to. The main window would have the user control in the first row, then Next and Previous buttons to control moving between the controls in the second row. This way I could easily control the logic to switch between screens like:
WizardControl1.IsVisible = false;
WizardControl2.IsVisible = true;
But for some reason, user controls do not have setter for IsVisible. Hurray.
So then I thought I would just use seperate windows for each section of the wizard. The problem with this approach is that now when stepping between, the window opens in random positions, and by steppign through the wizard with next, the next window pops up randomly which is really distracting and frustrating.
So how can I develop a wizard properly? I don't get why this is so hard...not exactly rocket science... replacing text and controls and storing input after pressing next/previous!
Thanks
Check this link:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WPF/InternationalizedWizard.aspx
This is the article about building wizard in WPF by Josh Smith, it's seems to be nice pattern.
I found it's helpful for me, hope you'll too.
There is also an open source Avalon Wizard control on codeplex.
I'd probably aproach this using data binding and template selectors. Have the wizard form bind to a "WizardData" class, which exposes a list of "WizardPage" base classes.
The WizardData class can expose properties defining the correct info on the forms, and display a control for the main page that uses a template selector to determine the proper control to display based on the actual type of the particular wizard page.
It sounds like more work than it is, really. It also gives you the benefit of good separation between code and UI (all "work" is done by the WizardData and WizardPage classes), and the ability to test logic independent of the UI.
It's also a very WPF/MVVM way of approaching the problem.
I recognize this does not directly address your question, but I thought I'd mention it as a possible alternative. I've used Actipro's Wizard control with pretty good results, and when I have needed support, they have been very responsive. I am not affiliated with them in any way; I just like not having to write the plumbing to manage a wizard.
The property is called "Visibility".
I find that I do better when I dynamically add and removing controls rather than hide them.
I was looking for a Wizard solution too. I have the need to stick with stock WPF components so I implemented the wizard using a standard form and a tab control.
I only hide the tabs at runtime so there available in the IDE. At runtime just use Back, Next, Finish... to navigate thru the tab items
works good
User Controls -- Do they serve a special purpose?
As far as I can tell they are no different to forms - they have the same toolbox and features.
Are there certain times when they are appropriate to use over forms?
It would be interesting to understand what they are good for.
You use them to group a set of controls and behaviors together in a re-usable way. You can't show a control on the screen unless it's added to a form somewhere.
One good example is a textbox. It's very common to have a label next to your textboxes. You can build a user control to make this easier. Just drop a label and a textbox on the control, expose whatever your properties you want, setup the new control in your toolbox, and now you can just drop this control on your form instead of needing to arrange a label and a toolbox on the form separately.
You could kind of think of them as a panel which "remembers" what controls you put on it. And there's one more important piece. You can put code in these controls as well, and use that to also build special behaviors into your custom controls.
I have to disagree (slightly) with the selected answer. Reusability is only part of what a UserControl is for.
All Controls are reusable. Almost all controls are reusable on the same Form/Window/Panel/etc. For example, a TextBox is a control.
There are two ways to create your own reusable control:
Custom Control
Completely custom, and reusable.
Created entirely in code.
You get a bit more granular control over what your control is doing this way.
Lighter weight (usually), because there isn't anything added in for designability within Visual Studio.
In ASP.Net only: No "HTML" type file to use or edit.
User Control
Completely custom, and reusable.
Created partially in a designer in Visual Studio, and partially in code. (via code behind)
Much easier to deal with from a visual aspect.
A little heavier, as there is pre-existing code added in by the framework to support designing inside Visual Studio.
In ASP.Net only: You can change the appearance a bit simply by editing the .ascx file (basically HTML).
User Controls serve the purpose of reusing controls.
Imagine you need a search box in several pages of your application. You can create a search user control and drop it in every page where you want it visible.
So, it's nothing more than a container that aggregates reusable blocks for your pages.
Forms have a lot of extra furniture that you don't need if you simply want a collection of controls together - the minimize and maximize buttons for example. If you just simply grouped your controls in a Panel, you'd have all the event handlers on the same form as the panel - with a user control, the event handling code is in the user control class, not the form class.
You can reuse the same control on many forms. In fact all items you are using while creating windows forms are the controls. User controls are just extra controls extending controls library provided by .NET.
In ASP.NET, user controls enable you to split your page into reusable components. For example, you may want to have a search box which can be used in different places on your website, so you'd use a user control. They can also be used for partial page caching. You can cache portions of your page to improve performance.