This question already has answers here:
Closed 13 years ago.
Possible Duplicate:
C# OpenFileDialog Non-Modal possible
I am working on a C# Windows Form project. While an open file dialog is up I am not able to select anything around it in the GUI. Is there any way to have the openfile dialog open and still be able to select other controls on the main ui?
There is no way to do this with the standard OpenFileDialog. You'd need to make your own, using a Form instead of a FileDialog as the base class. This would let you design your own version that was non-modal.
That being said, I'd recommend against this. File dialogs, in Windows, are modal by default. People expect this behavior from your application - so changing it will only lead to confusion and problems. This tends to make your application less usable and more complicated to end users, even though it often seems like a good idea.
The common dialogs are modal dialogs, which by definition do not allow interaction with any other window in the process while they are active. So the answer to your question is no, there isn't any way to do that. You would have to roll your own dialog using third party or self created controls to interact with the file system -- not a trivial task.
dban,
The OpenFileDialog class does not support the Show method which will open a form in a modeless state, that is, not locking out the parent.
As far as i know the only way to open the file dialog is like this, and it is modal. The ShowDialog method open forms as modal.
OpenFileDialog dlg = new OpenFileDialog();
dlg.ShowDialog();
You could write your own open file dialog class if you want it to be open non-modally.
But you should also consider whether this is really necessary or not. Typically when a user is presented with a file open dialog it is because the application needs a file. There is nothing else the user should be doing with the app in the mean time.
Related
I'm currently doing a security assessment of an extremely large C# application. I have wrote a tool to help me do the assessment that also runs in C#. The entire application uses ShowDialog aka modal forms. I'm trying to come up with a way where I can still use my tool (click on it for example) while modal dialog boxes are popped up. I figure, this may require another thread or something else. If anyone has any easy tips on a way to make it so that my form doesn't get blocked by ShowDialog, that would be great.
The entire purpose in using a modal dialog is for it to block it's parent until it is dismissed.
I've written a relatively large application with lots of dialog boxes and forms, etc.
I'm opening them with Form.ShowDialog().
A lot of the time, the forms open behind existing windows, e.g. yesterday I was testing it on a machine with several other programs open: many Windows Explorer windows, a few Excel windows, etc. A lot of my forms, open/save file dialogs, etc were supposed to open but didn't. I was twiddling my thumbs until I pressed alt+tab and realised that they were, in fact, behind another window.
Why is this happening, and how can I stop it in future? Thanks.
Use the ShowDialog override which takes an owner window as a parameter.
By passing in your main window as the dialog's owner, you guarantee that the dialog always pops in front of it, and stays in front of it.
And it won't annoy the user if they were using some other application.
I'm trying to make a video recording application for a project and was wondering if there was anyway to make the OpenFileDialog open up in a modeless diaglog box or would I have to make my own custom version? The reason I ask is the ShowDialog() function freezes my video. Thanks in advance for the help.
Yes, you can prevent a file dialog from blocking the UI thread, but it can be rather non-trivial depending on the details of how you want it to behave. If you're open to buying a component that does this automatically, ComponentAge offers one. Otherwise, you can roll your own by opening the dialog on a spawned thread. If you want the dialog to appear modal to the form that opened it, you'll need to do some extra work to trap the handle of the opened dialog so that you can set focus to it when the parent form is activated. An example is available at http://www.codeproject.com/KB/dialog/CustomizeFileDialog.aspx.
After opening a Word document, using .NET interop, a dialog box is created that blocks programmatic editing of the opened file. The user cannot see the winword.exe process and so cannot close the dialog. Is there a way to close a dialog or to prevent them being opened on startup?
I believe it might be the dialog asking first time users to set their name and initials.
Note: I know that it would be nicer to avoid using the interops and am familiar with Aspose products.
See my answer here.
Basically, you need to disable all "alerts", such the dialog that you describe above. Instead of "MSProject", use "Word" of course.
In the application I'm working on, I've been trying to use the SaveFileDialog and OpenFileDialog for their customary purpose (saving and opening files.)
However, the application can't support modal forms/dialogs without crashing because too many time-sensitive things happen on the thread that owns the UI.
Rewriting the application to move those features off the UI-owning thread is not practical in the immediate term. To finish the feature I've been working on, I need a substitute for the two file dialogs, preferably a control that can live on a non-modal form.
Is there anything out there I can use that won't block my UI-owning thread?
too many time-sensitive things happen on the thread that owns the UI.
That is your real problem. .Net has very robust multi-threading support. I suggest you move these things elsewhere, unpleasant though it seems. It's probably less work than re-implementing the Open/Save dialogs and definitely will be less for your app in the long run.
The only existing option I know of is Dialog Workshop.NET, a commercial product. They have a set of dialogs that have the option of being modeless (or embedded directly into a windows form instead of a separate window).
However, I'd really think about trying to move your time sensitive logic into a separate thread, instead. Having a modeless dialog will potentially confuse users, since it will not behave the way a file dialog is supposed to behave. There are also other potential consequences to having a non-blockable UI.