I have an application where I am trying to mimic the "soft description" textboxes like those found for the tags and title locations on this site.
The way I've done this is essentially to create my textbox, and depending on what happens when the mouse pointer enters or leaves the control, it updates the content of the textbox to get the effect.
The problem is what when my form is first shown, the mouse cursor immediately jumps into the first textbox, which removes the title telling the user what the textbox is for.
If I turn off AcceptTab on the textbox, then everything works as expected, but the user loses the ability to tab into the textbox.
Is there a way to turn off this automatic selection of the textbox?
Could you this.Focus() on the form itself, or on some label control?
Bit late but a perfect solution is to select the form on load of form.
Adding this line to the constructor will give the expecting result.
this.Select();
But while using multi thread controls like OpenFileDialog if u want to unfocus/deselect text-box this.Select() was not working so I selected a button in the form using.
button1.Select();
The TabIndex property controls what order things will tab in, and on load, focus goes to the first control (ordered by TabIndex) that has AcceptTab as true. You can change the ordering so that the control that you want the user focus to start in is lowest (and have tabs work cycle through controls as you'd expect).
Alternatively, as Jason suggested, you could simply call Focus() on whatever control or the form itself in the FormLoad event.
I used a variant on Jason's technique. First, I created a dummy textbox with tabindex 0. That way, when the form is shown, that textbox will be selected. Next, I made the dummy textbox have zero width, so that it has no visible component.
However, once the form is loaded, I don't want the user to be able to tab over to the "nonexistant" textbox. Therefore, I added these two bits:
//These functions prevent the textboxes from being implicitly selected.
private void dummyBox_Leave(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
dummyBox.TabStop = false;
}
private void Main_Enter(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
dummyBox.TabStop = true;
dummyBox.Select();
}
Where Main is the name of my form.
Hope this helps someone.
Billy3
Related
My combobox allows typing into the text portion so the only way to get the dropdown list is to click the button. However, since this will be used on touchscreen devices, it is hard to click it when it is this 'thin'.
Is there any way to increase the width of the combobox button?
One alternative to resizing the button would be to set the DroppedDown property to true inside the Click event. This will show the drop down list when the user clicks inside the edit area of the ComboBox, effectively extending the button area to the whole control:
private void comboBox1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
comboBox1.DroppedDown = true;
}
If you want to customize dropdown button (the size of the arrow and the size of the button are completely in our control), there is a class called ComboBoxRenderer.
Here you have complete example.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.windows.forms.comboboxrenderer?view=netframework-4.7.2
It is supported from .Net2.0.
You should create a custom ComboBox control and call DrawDropDownButton of the comboboxrenderer in the paint event.
In the above link(example) arrowSize and arrowRectangle are two variables which helps in deciding your dropdown button size, along with below static function (of ComboBoxRenderer) call in overridden paint event.
ComboBoxRenderer.DrawDropDownButton(e.Graphics, arrowRectangle,arrowState);
My program compiles and runs fine as long as you only use the mouse to navigate. I noticed that when I hit "Enter" it automatically registers as clicking one of my buttons in the window. I have started playing around with the "AcceptButton" property and setting it to appropriate buttons or even to "None." Nothing seems to work and it stays with it's default button it seems to has tied to "Enter." I have noticed that the buttons it's going to are the first I have defined in the code.
Long story short, I want to remove the "default" value for the Enter key to what the "AcceptButton" property actually specifies it to be.
Thanks,
Andy
you could capture the onKeyDown event and not handle it if it is enter
protected override void OnKeyDown(KeyEventArgs e)
{
if (e.KeyCode == Keys.Enter)
{
this.YOURBUTTON.PerformClick();
}
}
Assuming the WinForm has a TextBox, set the TextBox.TabIndex to 0. Again, making the assumption that this TextBox should be the first UI Element the user interacts with.
Then, change all the buttons to have a TabIndex > 0.
Finally, update the Form.AcceptButton to be the button you want to have for the default Accept/Enter.
If there is not a TextBox or some other element that can have a lower TabIndex, then the button will be the default UI Element with focus when the form is loaded up.
I have some buttons, one textbox and a datagridview on a winform.
and i want when form show in the screen to put cursor on the textblock,
for this i use txtName.Focus().
But everytime when the from loads textbox doesn't focus,
indeed dagaridview takes a focus on itself.
how to solve it.
You should set the TabIndex property of the controls in your form (your TextBox for example should have the lowest TabIndex so that when the form loads it will automatically have focus )
private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
dataGridView1.TabStop = false;
textBox1.TabIndex = 0;
}
hope its help
Simply change the tabindex property of your controls.
Pay attention to use directly the tabindex property, because, if you have controls contained in other controls (groupbox or panels) it could be misleading.
Use the menu View and the TabOrder tool.
Put your textbox first in the taborder. No need to code anything
You have to make sure that the page has been loaded before giving the textbox focus. Therefore, add an event for the Form's Load event.
You can do this on the designer, or in the code behind like so:
this.Load += new EventHandler(Form1_Load);
During the loading event, call Select on your textbox.
private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e){
txt_Name.Select();
}
The Select command can choose how much of the text you select. For example, select the first letter starting a index 0 would be txt_Name.Select(0,0). More info at the
MSDN.
Alternatively, you can use the tabindex property to 0 to ensure it gets focus first (as per ionden).
In a Windows Forms application, when do I write the code to set the focus to a control both while the application is launched and subsequently after I call a function?
For instance, if I have a DropDownList, a TextBox and four buttons and I want the Focus to be set to the DropDownList, where do I write my code?
To set the focus to a particular control on application launch, I can set the tab index to that DropDown (with a minimum value, under the assumption TabStop property is set to True).
Now, if the user completes an operation (say, any of the Click Button Events) and then I update the DropDown and after that if I want to set the focus...I can do it as
MyDropDownList.Focus()
QUESTION
NB: The question is more about where, not how?
By far the simplest solution is to set the TabIndex property correctly so that your 'MyDropDownList' control has the lowest index. The next approach is to do it in the constructor. But you have to use Select(), the Focus() method cannot work yet because the control doesn't become visible until later.
Public Sub New()
InitializeComponent()
MyDropDownList.Select()
End Sub
Works in the Load event as well. Focus() starts working in the Shown event.
When the parent window is activated (that is, when it receives the "Activated" event), set the focus to the child control where you want the focus located.
private void Form_AddAppID_Activated(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
textID.Focus();
}
Note that the tab order has nothing to do with where the focus starts. Instead, the tab order is used to decide how the focus gets transferred when the user hits the tab key.
I have a WinForm with 3 group boxes, one with combo boxes, and two with radio buttons. I set all of them and their children controls to "TabStop = false", but when I cycle with TAB, the currently selected radio button in each of the last two group boxes gets focused.
If there's no way to change this behavior, what would be a good event to catch and move the focus away? I can't find an "OnFocus" event.
The solution is to set one method (code below) to handle the "Enter" event of every radio button in the form (if that's what you wish).
Actually, I only did it for the radio buttons of the first group box and it worked, the second group box's radio buttons don't get focus, even though their "Enter" events are not handled. This is not the behavior you would have expected.
private void radiobuttonXGroup1_Enter(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
SomeOtherControl.Focus();
}
In the *.Designer.cs file you edit every Enter event (for each radio button) to point to one event handler (the above method).
this.radiobutton1Group1.Enter += new System.EventHandler(this.radiobuttonXGroup1_Enter);
this.radiobutton2Group1.Enter += new System.EventHandler(this.radiobuttonXGroup1_Enter);
this.radiobutton3Group1.Enter += new System.EventHandler(this.radiobuttonXGroup1_Enter);
Setting the TabStop to False on a RadioButton to prevent tabbing to the control works until you actully select the radio button without any additional overrides like suggested by #msergeant.
EDIT
The following code prevents the code from getting a tab key event:
private void radioButton1_CheckedChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
radioButton1.TabStop = false;
}
Radio buttons behave differently with respect to Tab from other controls in that they work in sets or groups based on setting the tab index or placing then radio buttons in a group box.
The MSDN documentation for RadioButton.TabStop states "This API supports the .NET Framework infrastructure and is not intended to be used directly from your code". Which basically means, "This isn't going to work how you expect it to".
With that said, the Enter event will fire when the button receives the focus. You can try to use that to move focus to another control.