Question

I am working on a C# WinForm application in Visual Studio 2008 and are using DevExpress.

I have added shortcuts to Some of the buttons (DevExpress SimpleButton) which triggers a button click (CTRL + R, CTRL B and so on…). I would like to show the shortcut texts in a tooltip next to each button when the user press and hold the CTRL key.

I have tried to use the DevExpress control ‘ToolTipController’ and that works OK if I only have one tooltip. But I would like to show more than one tooltip at a time. It seems like only the last tooltip that is added is shown.

Is it possible to show more than one tooltip at a time? Or does anyone have any other suggestion on how to solve this problem?

Answer 1

I solved this by creating a WPF control that looks similar to a standard tooltip (small box with a label). I then did an override on ProcessCmdKey and OnKeyUp on my form to listen to CTRL key down and key up.

When the user presses and holds down the CTRL key I loop through all my controls that has a shortcut and creates a WPF control on top of that control. For each WPF control I set the corresponding shortcut text. When the CTRL key is released I remove all WPF controls in OnKeyUp.

protected override bool ProcessCmdKey(ref Message msg, Keys keyData)
    { if ((msg.Msg == WM_KEYDOWN) && ModifierKeys == Keys.Control && !_isKeyDown)
        {
            _isKeyDown = true;
            ShowShortCutToolTips();
            this.Focus();
            return true;
        }
        return base.ProcessCmdKey(ref msg, keyData);
    }

   protected override void OnKeyUp(KeyEventArgs e)
    {
        base.OnKeyUp(e);
        if(e.KeyValue == 17 || e.Control) // 17 = Control Key
        {
            _isKeyDown = false;
            HideShortCutToolTips();
        }
    }