I have a composite control that is includes a groupbox control. The problem is it covers the controls that are placed on top of this composite control. Even though I send the new controls to top, so they should be visible, but they aren't.
When I just use the groupbox, of course it shows through things so you see the included controls, just outlined by the groupbox.
Should I have to do something to get the same effect/behaviour in a composite control?
EDIT: Left side shows the control in the designer, right side shows the control at runtime.
It is possible Quintin is right, and that something is going wrong with the designer support of your control, that is, you've created ControlA, and are extending it to ControlB by adding a button at design time. When you instatiate ControlB, the button is not visible.
Can you verify at runtime, using breakpoints/asserts/etc that:`
ChildButton exists.
ChildButton is a member of CompositeControl.Controls.
ChildButton location is 'in-view' of the CompositeControl.
ChildButton is visible.
If it were me, I'd set a breakpoint in the constructor of the control, and ride into InitializeComponent(), checking that everything is created and added correctly. If ChildButton exists, and has a reference in CompositeControl.Controls and its location is in-view, then I'm at a loss to explain why it's not showing.
If you are meaning that you would like the custom control to behave like a container (like a groupbox normally does) then you need to let the control and the designer know how it should be treated.
Remember to implement IContainerControl and decorate the object with the appropriate designer attribute for designer container support IE:
[Designer("System.Windows.Forms.Design.ParentControlDesigner,System.Design", typeof(System.ComponentModel.Design.IDesigner))]
Related
I have a WinForms application with a GroupBox in it. I have designed a user control which groups together a bunch of textboxes and other controls so that I can apply some custom logic to them. The user control looks like the following:
I want to place this user control within my GroupBox, however doing so ends up affecting the layout of the controls within my user control (see below).
As you can see, my textboxes are all spread out and resized from how I want them to be. If I place this control directly on the main form or in a Panel (not in the GroupBox) the layout is maintained, however the moment I place it in the GroupBox everything gets messed up. Is there a way to fix this problem?
The user control seems to have a different size in the two cases. Make sure it has the same size in the group box as when you place it directly on the form. If you have used a layouting control like a FlowLayoutPanel or a TableLayoutPanel, this might be of importance.
Also be aware that winforms controls inherit properties from their parent if they are not set explicitly. E.g., if you have not set the font property of the user control and its text boxes, those will be taken from the group box.
What ended up working for me was making a separate class MyGroupBox which extends GroupBox. The class is empty, but I converted the GroupBox on my form to this and placed the user control inside, which solved the problem.
Can you identify the purpose of this control element and what control it belongs to?
I am using MetroFramework, an extension of the standard Windows Forms controls. When I click on these elements, they disappear and my contained controls are painted correctly. I'd really like to get rid of these bars when the tab page is first painted. They do not appear thereafter, even if I switch tabs.
It was part of the MetroTabControl. For my purposes I substituted TabControl instances and the "behavior" was resolved.
Problem:
I cannot add any controls to a groupbox, if the controls were declared in another form.
Background Information:
I have MainForm which inherits from Form. It provides some functionality which I need in all of my forms, and have also added some custom controls/images which I need in all of the other forms.
With my forms, I reposition the controls/images from the MainForm to wherever I need and all is well.
But for some reason, I cannot move these same controls/images into existing GroupBoxes.
When I say can't I mean that VS is not letting me; when I drag the control over the groupbox, my mouse cursor switches to this "error" sign:
If I understand correctly then you have two or more level of inheritance hierarchy with your form, base class have the GroupBox you're trying to modify it in designer via derived form. Am I correct?
In that case VS prevents you to move control to groupbox which is declared in base class?
If yes, There are couple of things to check.
Check whether your groupbox is atleast protected, so that you can access it in derived class.
If yes, While you're dragging the control just right click the mouse(holding left button), then drop it into groupbox. It should work.
If you have troubles yet make the groupbox as protected internal and give a try.
Hope this helps
I have a WinForms user control Host with a custom UI Editor.
Through that editor, a child control (Child) can be added to Host.
(The UI Editor creates Child and sets Child.Parent = Host)
Child is handled through a Holder<Child> helper class, which is set as Tag property of e.g. a ListViewItem.
The respective code - some of it, at least - gets added to the form: Holder is created, and set as Tag, which is enough to be created at runtime, too.
However, Child is not visible to the designer - it is displayed, but it can't be selected, nor does it occur in the drop down list with controls for the parent form.
I would like to:
see the Child control in the designer, so that I can modify properties
get notified if the control is removed
Is this possible?
[edit] Thanks all for your input. I've decided to skip the designer - I hoped to throw together something quickly, but apparently it requires more planning than I should allow myself to spend on it right now.
Usethis.Controls.Add(/*Instance of the child*/); on the host class. Then for the notification add event handler for the host's ControlRemoved event (this.ControlRemoved += new ControlEventHandler(Host_ControlRemoved);).
I can't say I fully understand exactly what you are trying to do.
If you are dealing with the problem of how a "child" Control of a UserControl placed on a Form at Design-Time can be made to function as a container onto which you can drag-and-drop other controls from the Toolbox : this CodeProject article by Henry Minute may be helpful : Designing Nested Controls. For example : you have a UserControl with a Panel inside it : an instance of the UserControl is placed on a Form : in the Design-time view of the Form : you want to be able to drag-drop controls onto the Panel in the UserControl and have them become child controls of the Panel : Henry's article will show you how to do that.
This from Microsoft : How to make a UserControl object acts as a control container design-time by using Visual C#
Perhaps might also be useful, although it seems like you already have this step accomplished.
I have been able to create a custom C# winforms control that is basically a panel with a fixed banner (header/footer). I want to base other user controls on this "banner panel". I've gotten past the problem with the designer here. I can successfully add controls to the inner content panel. Everything looks fine while designing. However, when I recompile, the controls I added to the content panel disappear. They are still there (in code) but aren't displayed in the designer. Is there any thing that I need to do to set the drawing order of the controls?
Your controls are still nested correctly within the panel control, they have just lost their z-order. If you choose the controls from the property panel and right click on the control border that appears within the parent panel and select "Bring To Front" from the layout toolbar, your nested controls will re-appear. I don't know why it does this, but a workaround is to bring all child controls to the front during control initialization in the code.
There is really nothing to go on here without src. What I would do is to comment everything out including in the InitializeComponent function but a widget in the middle panel and run. Do whatever it takes to get that one widget to show. Inherit from UserControl instead of the banner panel.
Then comment in each piece until the widget no longer comes up. That is what is causing your problems. Once it all comes up properly, then you make sure the designer portion of the src works. It is going to potentially be a long process.