Question

I was wondering if it is possible to have a button inside a groupbox that is always enabled. even if the groupbox is not?

EDIT:
Here are 2 images that might explain more what i’m trying to do:

Enabled view:
http://www.imagecabin.com/index.php?view=322581721739323a1fdd1bb0d&html=1

disabled view:
http://www.imagecabin.com/index.php?view=32258209592bb28651742381c&html=1

As seen in the images, the red circled buttons are the ones that I always want to be clickable.
The state of the start/stop/pause buttons in the groupboxs is handled by events. This is why I disable the groupboxes if the server is stopped.

Answer 1

I agree with @JonH on this. Conventions are critical from a user experience perspective. Only break them when you have a good reason to.

If you are absolutely set on doing it though you can avoid the enabling/disabling problems described above by moving the button outside of the group box and then using absolute positioning to place the button on top of the group box. It would have the same parent control as the group box, but it would appear to be inside the group box for users.

UPDATE: After seeing the screenshots and understanding what the buttons do, I would either:

1. Move the buttons out of the group boxes and put them on a
   toolbar/menu or another part of the screen. Or…
2. Build a custom control which behaves like a group box (i.e. header and content
   area) that has a button which raises a popout event or something
   like that. Either way, I would make sure the button appears to be
   part of the control’s header so the intent is more intuitive.