Question

I am writing a custom control deriving from UserControl. In it are some controls that I want to prevent from being accessible (some textboxes, comboboxes). They are to become available for interacting only when the user clicks an ‘Edit’ button.

I read about KeyPreview but it is only available for forms. I find redirecting all the events to a common handler that checks if editing mode is enabled too much of a hassle.

Is there any way to put another transparent control over the others (Z orderwise), that will intercept all mouse and keypress events but renders the controls normally? Or maybe there is a different solution?

Edit:
I want to receive mouse events on the control that covers the others. I need those for Drag and drop and moving the custom control.

Answer 1

You can write your’s Enabled property in your UserControl and use it.

private new bool Enabled
        {
            get { return _enabled; }
            set
            {
                foreach (System.Windows.Forms.Control c in this.Controls)
                {
                    if (c is SomeTypeThatShouldBeExcluded)
                        continue;
                    c.Enabled = value;
                }
                _enabled = value;
            }
        }