Question

I’m trying to build a rather simple Windows Application for the employees that process our payroll (currently it’s a vbscript/terminal combination). The logic is mostly worked out, but I’m trying to find out what the best way build a Windows Forms application that has multiple screens (login/etc). I’ve been using the TabControl container for this, but just wasn’t sure if this was correct…or ‘common’.

If this is what is normally done are the contents of the tabs generally made up of User Control object or are they just filled with different layouts on the tab?

I doubt I need much in the way of help on the coding side, but more the “how a gui” is normally laid out in the visual designer.

EDIT: Just to provide a basis of the screens that I’m needing to build. I’m currently planning on having a Login Screen and the three screens that guide the user through processing two different types of payroll and then certain accounts receivables work. Primarily I will have two user types. The ones that process payroll and the ones that do accounts receivable work. I’m wanting to make this easily expandable so that as I build in more functionality it’s not a major pain to add screens and limit who can see them.

Answer 1

What I ended up doing is removing the “Login Screen” as hinted to in the question. Instead of a Login Screen and the corresponding logic being required I ended up doing integration with our Active Directory Server.

Once this integration was done I simply design the Screens as UserControl elements and then add each one to a tab based on if the user is in a specific group or not.

Doing this solved my main concern of having a heavy main form containing logic. Now the only logic in the main form is whether or not to add a tab based on Active Directory groups.