I have two forms for my application, that are visible in the Windows taskbar. When a modal dialog is popped up on the main form, the secondary form is locked. However, when the user clicks on the secondary form on the taskbar, it appears over the modal dialog box, and is basically frozen.
Is there a way to ensure that the modal dialog box does not draw underneath the secondary form? The topmost property is no good, since this draws on top of everything, even stuff not related to the application.
Your problem may be that you haven't specified an owner for the dialog:
Owned windows typically don’t need their own representation on the Windows taskbar because they are subordinate to their owners. Because activating an owned window implicitly activates the owner and vice versa, it would merely clutter up the taskbar to have entries for both. So owned forms normally have their ShowInTaskBar properties set to false.
The following code fragments (in VB and C#) show a new form being created, owned, and displayed:
// defining an owner form in C#
MyForm ownedForm = new MyForm();
ownedForm.ShowInTaskbar = false;
AddOwnedForm(ownedForm);
ownedForm.Show();
In your case, it would appear that you need to set the owner window for the dialog. That would prevent the window that is presenting the dialog from appearing over it.
EDIT Should have cited my source: .NET Windows Forms in a Nutshell. Also, I omitted the VB.NET code. I have appropriately flogged myself, but don't feel like wading through the PDF file to track it down.
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.
This is probably behavior by design, but I'll ask anyway -
I call a form from another project dll in my main project. It is NOT Modal (ShowDialog) or TopMost, and I set a variable for the form once it's created ("frm = New ..."), so that I can check when it's already been created (user clicks a toolbar button to create it initially.)
The form displays, fires events etc. all perfectly.
However, if I MINIMIZE the form and then call frm.Show through code to bring it back, nothing happens. The form remains minimized.
frm.Show has no affect and doesn't seem to fire any other events.
The only way to bring it back is to click on the taskbar icon for the MAIN form, which then displays the MAIN form AND the minimized forms (as icons), and then click on the icon for the minimized form.
I've tried various events (.Activate, .Show, .ShowDialog, .Focus) NOTHING will bring the other form out of its minimized state other than physically clicking on the Taskbar MAIN app icon and then selecting it.
Also, the main application is not MDI...
???
Thanks.
normally this should do it as suggested by #jimi
[TheForm].WindowState = FormWindowState.Normal
But sometimes this does not works for some dark reason, so you could use some other methods
form.Show();
form.BringToFront();
if (form.WindowState == FormWindowState.Minimized)
{
ShowWindowAsync(form.Handle, 9); // 9 = SW_RESTORE
}
I am sure there is one of these that will fix your problem
We have a VB.Net Application with a Main form that should always be visible. However, we want to be able to display a succession of two dialog windows where we can close the first dialog as the second one appears. However, when doing that, the Main form gets sent behind whatever other applications are open and does not re-appear until the second dialog window closes.
We can correct this issue by keeping the first dialog window open behind the second one, but it’s not ideal. What are we doing incorrectly?
Try using dialog1.owner = mainform
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.
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.