Question

I’m trying to make an application where the users can click on the buttons to navigate through different forms. I.E: If I click on network status, it replaces the Main Form with a network status form, and then you can go back to the main form by clicking on “return”.

What would be the best approach to do this? I’m thinking panels but people told me to use usercontrol and I’m not quite familiar with it. I’d appreciate any guidance.

Answer 1

Hi,

Assuming your requirement as depicted in the storyboard. Have a UserControl of these many controls which are DOCKED as per the picture on the UserControl. Now in the blank area you will have to show / hide your page / form / screen.

I would suggest this piece of code can do the trick for you to display / hide form dynamically on navigation. Have this in your navigation bit i.e. Next / Prev click on the Usercontrol –

        form.Location = new Point(leftPaneControl.Width , BannerControl.Height);
        form.Size = new Size(this.Width - leftPaneControl.Width, this.Height - BannerControl.Height);
        form.Anchor = AnchorStyles.Bottom | AnchorStyles.Top | AnchorStyles.Left |
                                   AnchorStyles.Right;
        this.Controls.Add(form);

On Next and Prev clicks , you just do Controls.RemoveByKey(...) to hide the existing form & the above code will add the next respective form after you have instantiated the same. This is a pretty cool function to remove control[s] from a collection if you have defined unique names for all your forms / screen / page [whatever you say].

This approach / design will allow you to just focus on designing your
pages / screens because creating this Usercontrol is a one-time
activity. After that you will only design your individual navigation pages / screens one by
one.