Question

I’m working on a Windows Forms app and I’m wanting to remove the close button from the top. I’m aware of the ControlBox option, but I’m wanting to provide a help button. Is there a way to have the Close button not visible while maintaining the help button?

Answer 1

Your best bet may be to subcribe to the FormClosing event of the form like so and cancel the closing action:

// In your code somewhere subscribe to this event
Form1.FormClosing += Form1_FormClosing;

void Form1_FormClosing(object sender, FormClosingEventArgs e)
{
    e.Cancel = true;
}

The benefit of doing this is that it prevents the user from closing the application from the close button and the taskbar.

Obviously you don’t want to ALWAYS cancel the form from closing. So you will want to set some type of boolean flag that you will check in the event listener as to whether you want the form to be allowed to close or not. Example:

void Form1_FormClosing(object sender, FormClosingEventArgs e)
{
    if (BlockClosing)
        e.Cancel = true;
}

EDIT: If you don’t want to approach the problem that way, and you really do intend to completely remove the close button, then your best bet is to create your own custom title bar. In that case, you set the form’s FormBorderStyle property to None. And you then dock your custom title bar to the top of the form. Here is some sample code from one I made a while back:

using System;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Windows.Forms;

namespace Spectrum.UI
{
    public partial class TitleBar : UserControl
    {
        public delegate void EventHandler(object sender, EventArgs e);
        public event EventHandler MinButtonClick;
        public event EventHandler MaxButtonClick;
        public event EventHandler CloseButtonClick;

        #region Properties
        [Category("Appearance")]
        public string Title
        {
            get { return TitleLabel.Text; }
            set { TitleLabel.Text = value; }
        }

        [Category("Appearance")]
        public bool MinimizeEnabled
        {
            get
            {
                return minButton.Visible;
            }
            set
            {
                minButton.Visible = value;
            }
        }

        [Category("Appearance")]
        public bool MaximizeEnabled
        {
            get
            {
                return maxButton.Visible;
            }
            set
            {
                maxButton.Visible = value;
            }
        }
        #endregion

        public TitleBar()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
            ShowTitleBarImage = false;
        }

        #region Mouse Events
        private void TitleBar_MouseDown(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
        {
            this.OnMouseDown(e);
        }

        private void TitleBar_MouseUp(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
        {
            this.OnMouseUp(e);
        }

        private void TitleBar_MouseMove(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
        {
            this.OnMouseMove(e);
        }
        #endregion

        #region Button Click Events
        private void minButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            if (MinButtonClick != null)
                this.MinButtonClick.Invoke(this, e);
        }

        private void maxButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            if (MaxButtonClick != null) 
                this.MaxButtonClick.Invoke(this, e);
        }

        private void closeButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            if (CloseButtonClick != null) 
                this.CloseButtonClick.Invoke(this, e);
        }
        #endregion
    }
}

As you can see from the image, I also added a background image to the control. Depending on your patience and your requirements, you can use images and PictureBox controls to make this look as much like a standard title bar as you need.

In the above example I placed three buttons on the control with images I found online to represent minimize, maximize, and close. in your case you would simply exclude a close button. I also placed a string on the control with an appropriate font to serve as the title of the window.

Adding the custom title bar to your form is easy.

public TitleBar titleBar = new TitleBar();
titleBar.Dock = DockStyle.Top;
titleBar.MaximizeEnabled = true;
titleBar.MinimizeEnabled = true;
titleBar.Size = new System.Drawing.Size(10, 40); // Width doesn't matter - I wanted it 40 pixels tall
titleBar.Title = "Title Example";
titleBar.MinButtonClick += titleBar_MinButtonClick;
titleBar.Max ButtonClick += titleBar_MaxButtonClick;
this.Controls.Add(this.TitleBar);

And then last step is to set up your event listeners for the min and max button clicks:

private void titleBar_MinButtonClick(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    WindowState = FormWindowState.Minimized;
}

private void titleBar_MaxButtonClick(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    WindowState = FormWindowState.Maximized;
}

You may also note that I included events for mouse down, up and move in my title bar. This was so that I could create listeners in my form to move the form when the user clicked and dragged the title bar. This is optional and depends on if you need the user to be able to move your application window.

The added benefit of doing this is that can use the title bar for additional controls. For example, my application was custom written for use on a toughbook style tablet computer with a small touchscreen display. In my application, utilization of the limited space was extremely important. I was able to further modify what I’ve described here to also include menu bar style control directly on the title bar. In addition, I added more buttons to the left of the stand minimize, maximize, and close buttons. Really helped me utilize every square inch of the screen in my application. Couldn’t have done it with the standard title bar.