This is more of a UI Design approach on how to let the user edit values in a list box.
I am interested in the Usability issue.
First approach is having a textBox near the list.
When user selects an element in the list, the text goes to the textbox.
My second though is having an input box coming up (a modal) and edit the value there.
Another option is to use a list view and let the user edit inline. This might be tricky if the user doesn't know this is editable (not all user do)
What would you prefer? Any suggestions on a different approach?
I have used data binding to bind text boxes and numeric controls to a listbox. As the list box selection is changed then the relevant data appears in the controls.
Another way is a property grid linked to the current selected item in the list box. That works well for users who may be relatively savvy for the property grid.
As far as I think I would go for your second approach. I would like an edit button. When I select any item in the list box, edit button should be enabled. When I click edit a small modal dialog saying ok or cancel and in textbox displaying the current value which I can edit.
I think a list view looks a lot cleaner, and people are getting more used to this kind of thing as more web pages use client-side script, Ajax, etc.
I don't like the idea of a modal popup - very clunky.
I did this recently using a hidden text box that I would show positioned over the list box item populated with the selected item text when the user double clicked or pressed F2. When the user pressed enter or the text box lost focus, the text box was hidden and the list box item text was replaced with the edit box text. If the user pressed escape, the text box was hidden and the list item text remained unchanged (i.e cancel).
Related
I am trying to look for a simple way to design a winform with a combobox that has checkbox values in it to select multiple values.
But there are no free samples I could find.
If anybody has a good link for a sample which does not require a license.
Please let me know.
I am not looking for controls like telerik and infragistics.
Maybe this example can help you.
CheckBox ComboBox Extending the ComboBox Class and Its Items
It sounds like what you really want is a checked listbox control or maybe even just a listbox. These controls do multi-select in a way that is more standard for Windows.
If you really need a combo box with checkboxes in it, here's an article on code project I used once.
My suggestion, if space is an issue as #rmc00 has eluded to, place a button at the end of a readonly Textbox with perhaps an elipse (...) or down arrow (same as combobox) as the text of the button and when clicked or MouseDown make visible and position a CheckBoxList or open a popup dialog with a CheckBoxList this way you can either prepopulate at design time or pass a DataTable as a parameter/property to your control/form so it is databound at runtime. You can always place your control or write code to position the control/form exactly below your TextBox in the MouseDown/Click event. On check change update your textbox with a comma separated list (or go fancy and say if more than 3 items the text box can have the list stored in the Tag and the TextBox Text can have the count of items checked). Finally on LostFocus hide the Control (or Form), and further if you want to get fancy make the exception to not hide when the ActiveControl is the Button that way you can toggle the visibility of consecutive button presses.
I have an application where I have a product search text field. To implement a predictive text like feature, I hid a combo box behind the text box that populates with the appropriate products. That all works fine and dandy. The problem is the cursor does not show on the form while the combo box is dropped. I can still use the cursor to select the results from the combo box, but it is invisible until I click something on the form.
ComboBox AutoComplete Custom Capabilities
See this accepted answer to this question. Combo box already has an AutoComplete mode. No reason to hide it behind a textbox.
Bring the cursor back with:
Cursor.Current = Cursors.Default;
Do you have the combobox dropdown style as DropDownList?
Also why not use the AutoComplete Mode to accomplish predictive text feature
http://msdn.microsoft.com/query/dev10.query?appId=Dev10IDEF1&l=EN-US&k=k(SYSTEM.WINDOWS.FORMS.COMBOBOX.AUTOCOMPLETEMODE);k(SYSTEM.WINDOWS.FORMS.COMBOBOX);k(VS.PROPERTIES);k(TargetFrameworkMoniker-%22.NETFRAMEWORK%2cVERSION%3dV3.5%22)&rd=true
I am contemplating having a menu in my WPF application that works in a similar way to the Windows 7 start menu.
In my mind, this means that I should make a user control that consitues a button. Clicking on the button will display a list box, and inside the list box it will be possible to search the items that are registered in the list box.
Would that be an advisable way of doing it or is it better to do something different such as changing the template of a menu control?
Thanks for any help, it is very much appreciated.
It seems you have the design already made up. Do exactly that! :) Create a button that when pressed, displays a panel that contains a list box and a text box. Tie an event to key presses in the text box that changes what the object bound to the list contains.
After that, it's just a SMOP!
I wanted to adjust the width of the Autocomplete dropdown box of a textbox. I dont want to adjust the width of that textbox, but only Autocomplete dropdown. I know that there is no way I can increase the width of the Autocomplete dropdown by using properties provided with textbox.
Hence I wanted to know whether there is any way to get the handle of that Autocomplete box and then increase the width of that drop downlist without changing the textbox width?
If this is not possible then I would like to create my custom textbox with autocomplete, in this case how to use the existing autocomplete functionality provided by microsoft? Is there any way to do it. Are there any libraries available for this?
I don't think you can use Microsoft's implementation of autocomplete, which does not have an option to adjust dropdown width.
Create a background thread to not get into the way of typing, and hook up the text change event of a combobox box or a textbox to update the candidate list (assuming autosuggest mode since you mention a dropdown). You can probably add/remove the combobox items on the fly if you have a combobox. But for dropdown list and textbox items you need a popup window
It is easy to get a popup to show, but you need to not use a fixed position so it won't go off the screen when the textbox is close to the edge of the screen. And the focus logic is a little bit complex. you need to keep focus on the textbox unless the user press the arrow keys to make a selection.
so
when focus is on textbox:
arrow keys move the focus to the popup
other keys goes to the textbox, if not handled by the dialog itself, except for the delete key when mouse is over the popup.
when focus is on popup:
arrow keys move the focus to the sibling candidate item or the textbox
other keys goes to the textbox, if not handled by the dialog itself, except for the delete key
mouse clicks:
dismiss the popup outside of the popup or the popup.
update the value of textbox if a candidate item in the popup is clicked on
It takes a lot of effort to get the focus/threading right. If you can afford some form space, you can just add a fixed width listbox to the form instead, like Visual Studio help viewer's index pane.
After going through lot of blog posts and different articles, I came to a consensus that it is next to impossible to get a solution to my problem in the way I wanted. So I've decided either to come up with a custom solution or as Sheng Jiang said I need to implement my own autocomplete object.
I've come up with a solution which fits my requirement by increasing the width of the textbox as per the largest string in the autocomplete string list while I'm adding the autocomplete custom source. As I said I cant increase the width of the text box because of the size constraint on the form, so I decided to keep this textbox in a panel and increase the size of the textbox inside that. Panel will not grow with the textbox so that solved my problem.
I know this is not perfect solution but it fits my requirement.
I have a list box with Checkboxes in it. I want to prevent the Checkbox from changing its status if the user clicks on the text next to it. I only want it to change if the small box is clicked directly.
Is there any way to do this in windows forms?
Greetings and thanks in advance.
Place the text next to it in a Label, instead of the Text property of the Checkbox. Or you could create your own control which has a Checkbox and a Label. The Text property of the control would then fill the Text in the Label, and you could expose all of the Checkboxes regular properties in your control.
That's fairly non-standard behavior. Users are going to expect to be able to change the checkbox when clicking on its label, and are going to be frustrated, confused, and surprised when it doesn't work. I'd recommend not doing this. I'm not the only one.
(Yes, it's about web design, but many of the concepts are applicable in desktop application design as well.)
You could always not fill in the Text property of the Checkbox and make a completely separate Label control.
Otherwise, you will probably have to do explicit hit testing within the control to see if they hit the box or text. And then you will have to worry about checking the margins, which side the box is on, and other things that can change the position of the box.
I personally was only able to freeze things.
I freeze the check boxes by handling the Click and ItemChecked events,
and change the check state back, when it gets modified.
I use a menu to check/uncheck items and let user decide to use the menu or classic behave.
Cheers, good luck.