I'm looking to create a setup form for my application - and I wanted to use a tab form to keep my logic on the one form since it's very simple rather than many of them. Is there a way to remove the tab navigation UI up top and allow me to only progress it programatically?
Look at user controls. They cover pretty much what you want.
Just create a user control for each view. It only consists of the controls you want to have on each tab page anyway. Then you can hide/show the user control you want and you do not have a full blown form for each view.
Look at this tutorial: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/a6h7e207%28v=vs.71%29.aspx
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I am doing my first steps programming a little toolbox in C#.
I want to choose the program to run via a menustrip.
How can I switch all visible textboxes, buttons etc. on the same form? I don't want to open a new form. Do I have to show/hide every element "by hand" or is there a better solution?
I hope you get my problem.
Thanks in advance.
Yes totally understood.
You need a way to navigate between different fragments within your application.
Since these are your first steps and not a legacy app, why aren't you starting with WPF which is the successor of Winforms ? (newer better)
See how can you achieve such functionally in WPF
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/desktop/wpf/app-development/navigation-overview?view=netframeworkdesktop-4.8
Although the terms are similar and also apply in winforms.
What you want to do is to create all the buttons etc as part of a UserControl. You can then add your custom UserControl to the form. This should allow you to switch the user control for some other control, or change the visibility for the whole user control.
This can also allow you to place multiple user controls side by side or in some other layout.
hi I want to make a wpf c# application which shows every form(Ex:- user registration, reports , etc..)in one window in other words I want to make an application which have one window and every user control appears and closed there when I want just like games in some games like middle of honor warfighter they have one window and if we chose option option buttons appear in the same window and if we chose graphics that graphic page content appear in that same window.
and I want to know is there any frame work or special method is there which I should fallow other than putting wpf controls one over another and changing there visibility and isopen status.If there is any examples please give me a link
You can use ContentControl for holding any element. also PRISM is best approach.
You can use WPF Popup forms below are some links for more info:-
http://www.dzone.com/articles/understanding-wpf-popups
http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/Blogs/11700/
Take a look at this MDI Control. It helps you to show any kind of usercontrol in one container as window.
I'm developing a bunch of user controls which do different things - like a maintenance screen, enquiry screen, report screen that sort of thing. Each screen has a dedicated purpose and a single user control holds all the functionality for the one screen.
I'm using avalondock and can place these user controls into LayoutDocuments. This creates a separate tab for each screen/user control. I've got a menu system setup so users can choose which screens they need access to. For each new screen I create a new LayoutDocument, add the appropriate control to it, then add the LayoutDocument to the Docking panel's children.
This is all working fine.
Avalon dock also has the feature of being able to drag out the layout document and make it float - you can also dock it somewhere else in the app if you wish.
I'd like to take this concept one step further: Being able to say right click on a layout document and choose "Make external window" (i'll work out the exact wording later). The effect of this action would be to create a new application with it's own icon in the task bar; being able to alt-tab between it and other apps;
Kind of like when you're in say Excel editing a document and you then open up a second instance of excel. In Windows 7 you get two excel icons in the task bar (one behind the other), and you can alt-tab between them.
This is nearly the behaviour that i'm after. However the second app isn't a full blown copy of the first; it has only the one user control that the user selected.
This is where i'm stuck and would like a bit of guidance.
I'm thinking that i'll probably need some kind of shell app where I can pass in the user control that I want. The shell would act as a window with title, X, minimising etc; the user control would then be the sole content of that shell. Use process.start to create new process and launch ?
Ideally i'd be able to pass in the same control in the same state as the user is currently viewing - so if for example they are part way through editing some customer record in a maintenance screen, then choose the "external window" option, that same customer record would appear in the new window.
Has anyone done something similar or offer advice if i'm on the right track ?
I think I know how to create a shell app but not sure on passing a user control to it dynamically. I'd like to avoid creating different shell apps for each user control.
No need to start a new process for that scenario.
Just create a new Window add your UserControl at runtime and remove the UserControl from the DockingManager. Make sure the Window has ShowInTaskbar set if you want it to show up there.
To get the command to undock the UserControl as a seperate Window you just have to restyle the ContextMenu to incorporate your command (take a look at the VS2010 theme and how the ContextMenu is styled there VS2010 theme.xaml).
I'm pretty new to WPF and C#. I am looking to create multiple windows with in one primary window, like creating forms and subforms in Microsoft Access. I would like to work with One main .xaml and have two seprate .xaml's that the user will open with a button selection. I do not want to have multiple windows pop up (if possible). Instead I would like the main .xaml to display the selected .xaml with-in itself.
Create a User Control and switch the visualization, more examples: http://windowsclient.net/learn/video.aspx?v=76360
You can user user controlls for this. This is a good walkthrough http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WPF/UserControl.aspx
As the other individuals have said, you'll want to create a User Control. It's fairly good practice to create User Controls where possible if you'll be re-using the code.
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.