CODEWITHSUNDEEP
vb.netwinforms
drew.cuthbert
drew.cuthbert

Reputation: 1015

Making multiple forms appear as one in VB.NET

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.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 11342

Answers (4)

Jade
Jade

Reputation: 2992

try using ShowDialog()

Dim newForm as New AcctForm
newForm.Location = Me.Location
newForm.ShowDialog()
Me.Close() <-- removed this

Upvotes: 0

moayadmyro
moayadmyro

Reputation: 1

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

Upvotes: 0

Joel Coehoorn
Joel Coehoorn

Reputation: 416053

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.

Upvotes: 4

Grim
Grim

Reputation: 672

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!

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions