Question

I’m writing a simple calc-based app in C# WinForms. My issue is that I have textbox to display results which cannot be clicked/focused because buttons are binded to keyboard. Textbox has to have ContextMenuStrip, but only this action should be handled within textbox. Also this app requirement is that it cannot have any focusable controls. Something like Windows’ Calc result box. Any advice?

Answer 1

Create custom text box:

public class TextBoxWithoutFocus : TextBox
{
    private const int WM_SETFOCUS = 0x7;

    protected override void WndProc(ref Message m)
    {
        if (m.Msg == WM_SETFOCUS)
            return;

        base.WndProc(ref m);
    }
}

That’s all. Text box will never receive a focus (actually it will receive focus, but it will not change its look). Also consider suppress WM_CHAR message (0x102) if you want to disable user input.

UPDATE (trick you can use with buttons):

public class ButtonWithoutFocus : Button
{
    public ButtonWithoutFocus()
    {
        SetStyle(ControlStyles.Selectable, false);
    }
}