I am using vb.net and don't want to use WPF.
I have a menustrip having many menus.
These menus have many menuItems.
When I click on any menuItem I show a new form to the user.
When user finish his work and return to the main form he should be able to see the menu as it was while he left the main form.
I mean when I click on a menuItem the menu closes. But I don't want it to close.
It will likely be more confusing for your users having a menu that never closes because it defies expected behaviour. You are better off using one of the other controls suggested.
Every Operating System (Windows, Mac etc) define a standard set of controls for a reason - to enforce consistency and predictability across multiple applications. It's why you know to look to the menu to find a command. Microsoft, Apple etc all produce "design standards" documents that specify a baseline for the way that your user interacts with your app.
If a user selects something from the menu and the menu never closes, the user could well think that your application is broken.
Related
I have created my MS Access Program but I have multiple monitors and so do the other people who will be using the program.
Just so you know my forms are popup style, have no borders or record selectors and I am guessing this is where my issue comes in.
I would like to know if there is a way to ensure that when a user opens a form, the form will only open within the MS Access Window/Canvas on the active monitor?
I would also like to know if there is a way for my application to automatically adjust according to the users screen resolution?
As an example my Forms open perfectly when I am using the application on my main screen which has a resolution of 3840 x 2160 but if I open the application on my second screen which has a resolution of 1920 x 1080 the forms that open subsequently, such as the user form, then opens on the main screen so small that no one can read or see it.
Application is on Right monitor and User Form is Open on Left (Main) Monitor
The code I have used for the OnOpen Event is below:
Private Sub Form_Open(Cancel As Integer)
Dim Right As Integer, Down As Integer
Right = Screen.ActiveForm.WindowLeft
Down = Screen.ActiveForm.WindowTop
DoCmd.MoveSize Right, Down
End Sub
This was obtained from some research but I cant seem to bind everything to the Application Window/Canvas.
Thank you.
Well, if you only ever have one window open at one time, then you can do this with ease.
Remember, today most applications are SPA (what we call single page applications). We don't use (nor have) very often a main applcation window, and THEN a child window. For one, they tend to not be touch friendly, and it is VERY hard to move a window around with touch.
but, even desktop browsers even use some "kind" of tabbed interface. And so do most desktop applications. And by tabbed - I don't necessary mean across the top. This access screen shows a tab system from the left side:
So, Access now has a option to use tabbed interface.
And if you :
do NOT use pop windows.
Set access to use tabbed interface, eg this:
Then un-check the display tabs.
If you do above, then you WILL NEVER EVER see the access background window.
You see this:
However, keep this in mind:
The form you launch will re-size to the main size of the Access window - not the other way around.
All forms can't be popup
You are "SPA" like applcation.
So, most accounting and most desktop applications now work this way. And WHEN you launch a form, the window does not re-size tot he form, but remains the current applcation window size.
So, without ANY specials code, you can 100% hide the access background window.
And if you re-size the access application window, then the form will re-size to fill out the current form.
This might look quite bad in some cases - such as this:
Now for above, I on purpose made the form background green - just to PROVE and show that that Access background window NEVER will display with above options.
So, the main issue here?
You can 100% hide the access background window. And you can now do this WITHOUT specials code. Just a few settings.
On startup, you can hide the ribbon - or build a custom one - again your choice.
But, your forms MUST NOT be popup forms anymore.
So, hiding the access background window is very easy - it then becomes a question of form size - size forms re-size to application window size - not the other way around.
On the other hand, if you adopt a tabbed interface (accross the top or left side), then your main window is always in display, and you are in effect swapping out the form (a sub form) for display of that given form. You can write your own code, or use a new navigation form - which does this for you).
If you need to launch separate windows, then you could launch them as popup from this main form - but that main form will of course always hide the access background if you follow above.
If you wish to hide the ribbon, then on your main form - load event, you can add this code:
DoCmd.ShowToolbar "Ribbon", acToolbarNo
So, your main form (which hides access background) could be tabbed inteface (SPA) or it could be a launcher form, and each option clicked on could launch a form as popup - which can be dragged anywhere on your computer - including to the 2nd monitor if you wish.
So, either forms stay always in the main applcation window - but never see the background. Or you use above, and launch forms as popup.
I had a question about Dialogs in VB.NET. I am working on a point of sale program, and at one point during a sale, I have a few windows that pop up. For example, a user will go into a sale that is window A. In window A, they have the option of entering products, etc., and if they choose a 'repair' product, it opens window B, allowing them to choose options. In window B, there is a button that pops up window C that allows them to attach products TO the repair. My issue is with window B opening window C.
Because I open window B as a Dialog (in order to check if DialogResult.OK is true), any window I open with B is non-touchable, as B is a Dialog and requires attention before going to any other windows/forms.
My question is - is there any way to still use a dialog, but allow for manipulating other open forms while the dialog is up, and if not, what would be the best way to check if the user selected OK, or cancelled out of the window?
The only solution I can think of right now would be to open window C as a dialogue as well (it's actually a UserControl, and I'm still trying to find where in the code it's actually getting openned/called), or to create a variable that is passed in to the form, and then passed back out when it's closed, that basically sets a flag to either continue or cancel...
Any advice/ideas??
If I were to explain this using code, this answer would be very long, so instead I'm going to give you a high level overview.
.Show() vs .ShowDialog()
The link below will take you off to Microsofts website to explain the technical differences between these two. However in laymans terms, .ShowDialog() will create the form where it is the only window allowed to have focus in the application. Forms that are called in this instance are hierarchical, in that if you open them in order of 1,2,4,3 then they must be closed in the 3,4,2,1 order. Forms that are opened with just .Show() can be focused at any time.
How to: Display Modal and Modeless Windows Forms
Form.FormBorderStyle property
This property controls how the OS will display the window. The different options under this selection changes the way the window behaves. Depending on the options that are chosen you can make a window that only has a close button on it, or it may not even have a title bar at all. Setting this option to None will take away all controls of the form and only leave you with the Me.ClientArea to work with. When you want a completely custom GUI, this is how you do it but you have to implement your own controls for everything, closing the form, size handles, the ability to move the form on the screen, etc...
Form.FormBorderStyle Property
Passing data between forms
When someone asks how to pass data back and forth between forms, they are usually talking about modeless forms that were created using .Show(). The most common thing I see on SO is to use the tag property of an object (a form is an object that has this property too) to pass data back and forth. While I won't say this is a bad practice, I will recommend creating public properties on your forms. These can be set from a separate form and you can perform additional actions when setting the values (be careful though, this way of doing things isn't thread safe). If you are using a Modeless form as though it were a Modal form, then you can simply override the .Dispose property to return a value or you can create a method named DialogResult that will return the value you need. The caveat to using a DialogResult or similar method is that if the form has been disposed then you can't access the value you wanted to return.
You can use myNewForm.Show(Me) for the Window you want to be shown as a dialog. This will show myNewForm as a child of the current form, but lets you interact with the current form.
I am writing a Windows Forms application in VB.NET. I have three forms: the main form, which shows a list of accounts, the account form which allows the user to view/edit the information for a specific account, and the policy form which allows the user to view/edit the information on a specific policy for that account. I want the forms to appear as if they are all the same window. Example: when the application starts, the user clicks an account name in the list box on the main form and clicks "edit". What I want to happen is that the window stays in the exact same place and stays the same exact size, only the content of the main form appears to be replaced with the content of the account form. Same thing if the user then chooses to edit a policy from the account form. When the user finishes and clicks "save", the main form comes back up. Through this entire use case, it would appear to the user as if they were viewing the same window the entire time, with the content of that window changing.
How can I do this? I have tried something like:
Dim newForm as New AcctForm
newForm.Location = Me.Location
newForm.Show()
Me.Close()
The problem is that if the user moves the original window, the new window appears where the parent form originally appeared, not where it ended up.
I see this is already in the comments, but what I have done in this case in the past is build each "form" in the application as a custom control. Then I have one actual form, and navigation works by changing which custom control is currently loaded on the parent form. To move from one screen/view to another, you remove the current custom control from the form's controls collection and add the new custom control.
I believe this is superior to manually setting the startup position and size, because you can use the form's .SuspendLayout()/.ResumeLayout() methods to hide the interim state, where there is no control loaded, from the user. This is harder to do when you want one form to be completely replaced by another.
This also makes it easy to set certain form properties in one place and have them be consistent for the application. You can even have an area on the form with controls that will now show in every view.
When using this pattern, I typically have each of my custom controls inherit from a common base. You may not have anything specific you will do with that base at the outset, but it almost always comes in handy later.
Finally, switching to use this scheme is easier than you think. Just go to the code for the each of your current forms, and you will find that each class currently inherits from System.Windows.Forms.Form. Most of the time, all you really need to do is change them to inherit from System.Windows.Forms.Panel and you're most of the way there.
As others have said, it may be better to redesign your application using custom controls or panels etc.
However, to answer your question regarding the seemingly random location of your forms, the first thing to check is that each form has it's StartPosition property set to Manual.
If your main form is resizable, then I would also add code to adjust newForm to the same size too.
I hope that helps with your immediate issues; so that you can move on to redesigning the application!
good morning there is another way . set property for second form to (top most) and use also
from2.show();
that make you switch between forms and keep form2 top other
Thanks
try using ShowDialog()
Dim newForm as New AcctForm
newForm.Location = Me.Location
newForm.ShowDialog()
Me.Close() <-- removed this
We have a "Core" system that we use to run the business and there are about 15-18 people using it at any one time. The program is written in VB.NET and has about 165 forms.
The way it works is when the user runs the program he/she is prompted to log in and if the login is successful a "Main" form is displayed with a number of menus (Customers, Suppliers...). From there they can click on the menus which open another form on top of the "Main" (the "Main" form needs to be visible in the background because it displays information that is relevant to the users while they are in other screens)
The issue we are having is that if the users have other programs open while using the "Core" system (Outlook, Word, Chrome, anything really) and switch to another program and then back to the system, it only displays the "Main" form and any other forms open on top disappear. The way we get around this is by switching back to the other programs they have open and clicking on the minimise button in the top right corner of the window until all the other programs are minimised, which only leaves the "Core" system visible. However this is becoming a nuisance to all the users (including myself and the other developer) and we really need to sort this issue out in order to keep out staff happy :)
I would appreciate any advice or pointers in the right direction which will help us solve this issue and please feel free to ask if you need any more information.
It seems you are creating the ChildForm from the MainForm but the ChildForm itself is showing itself with Me.ShowDialog(). What you should probably try is showing the form from the MainForm and passing the MainForm in as the parent. This should keep the form tied to it's parent and on top. For example:
childForm.showDialog(Me)
Where Me is the MainForm. This is the documentation for that method.
This is the important part:
Owner Type: System.Windows.Forms.IWin32Window
Any object that implements IWin32Window that represents the top-level window that will own the modal dialog box.
Does that make sense?
Changing code to show dialog will change behavior of your code little bit, like your main from execution will hold till you close child form
But you can you use only show as child (not dialog)
childForm.show (Me)
This will not change anything except whenever you click on main form it will display its entire children on it.
Am writing a VB.Net app written in VS2010. This displays some reports in several forms. (Am using Crystal Reports though this is incidental to the problem). The user needs to be able to check these, then confirm if he wishes to run the update process or abort.
My first idea was to ask the user to reply using a messagebox. But of course this is modal, so the user cannot browse through the reports.
I thought of other options but each seems to have problems:
- export the reports as PDFs, then display report in external Adobe Reader Window using System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("AcroRd32.exe", filename). This seems messy.
- create a non-modal message box or equivalent. This loses any concept of program flow, so am unconvinced by this
What ideas do you have please?
You should already be using a form to display the report(s). Put all the reports on the same form with scroll bars enabled and add a button to that form for the user to 'Update Process'.
You may come up with a better display based on how many reports you want the user to look at - like a drop down at the top with list of reports in it OR a radio button list on the left with reports listed etc.