Question

I have textboxes in my Windows Forms application, and I want that when the user presses the ENTER key then the cursor goes to the next textbox.

How do I do this?

Is this a good habit or shall I avoid it? Actually the users are very much prone and have adapted and have become habitual of pressing ENTER key for navigation between textboxes and buttons. So, for them I need to do this.

Please help me with the complete code using two text-boxes as an example.

Answer 1

I would say the nicest way is to create a user control that inherits from TextBox and then override the OnKeyPress method to capture enter and send a tab. Focus will then be given to the next TabIndex on the form, just as though a tab had actually been entered.

The code below does exactly that:

public partial class CustomTextbox : TextBox
{
    public CustomTextbox()
    {
        InitializeComponent();            
    }

    protected override void OnKeyPress(KeyPressEventArgs e)
    {
        if (e.KeyChar == '\r')
        {
            e.Handled = true;
            SendKeys.Send("{TAB}");
        }

    }
} 

You could also put similar code in the KeyPress event handlers for your controls but this saves a lot of duplicate code and unnececessary event handler.

As for whether this is good practice – I would say in general, no, changing the default behaviour of forms is never a good idea, but of course, if this is what your users want and expect, then it is their decision.