Windows Forms 2.0 Programming

3. Dialogs A dialog is defined by its use. If a form is the application's main window, it's a window and not a dialog. However, if a form pops up in response to a user request for service, such as a request to open a file, and stops all othe...

Standard Dialogs Windows Forms ships with several standard dialogs (sometimes known as "common dialogs") provided as components located in the System.Windows.Forms namespace. Here's how to manually create and show an instance of a dial...

Form Styles Chapter 2: Forms introduced the important dialog-related properties: ControlBox, FormBorderStyle, HelpButton, MaximizeBox, MinimizeBox, ShowIcon, and ShowInTaskbar. By default, a new form shows the control box, is sizable, doesn't show...

Data Exchange No matter what kind of form you have, you need to get data into it and out of it. Although it is possible for a form to update an application's data directly when the user presses OK or Apply, it is generally considered bad practice ...

Data Validation Even though you may have a nice modal or modeless form, it doesn't mean you can trust your users. I don't mean you can't trust them to pay (a separate issue that I won't go into here); I mean you can't trust the data they enter. Th...

Implementing Help As noticeable as the ErrorProvider user interface is (at least compared with the status strip), it's nice to provide user help that doesn't take the form of a reprimand. It also is useful to give users help without making them tr...

Where Are We? This chapter deals with topics that are often dialog-related: getting data in and out, validating data, and letting users know about the required data format (including providing access to online help). But none of these topics is sp...