在单个表单/窗口中具有多个视图/选项卡的最干净方法

Question

My goal is to make an application where, conceptually, everything happens in a single window - a principle most applications I commonly use exhibit, at least for their main interface. Installers are a good example of what I am trying to do, where you basically page through the interface.

You can do this fairly well using a (invisible) tabcontrol. This allows you to design the individual tabpages (which are basically forms as far as controls go) in the designer, and you can manually switch between tabpages, and it all takes place inside the same outer form.

The problem is, this results in code for everything all in the main form. What I want is basically the design capabilities of separate forms (drag-and-drop components, only has code for its own controls), but that can be put inside the tabcontrol to get the intended user interface.

What is the best way to do this? I assume there is a clean solution given how common this is.

Thus far I have followed C# Multiple Screen View Single Form , which works well aside from the fact that all the code ends up in the same class (for example, you need unique names for every single element on the form).

Answer 1

I think you're looking for UserControls . They let you create a "form without a window" if I had to simplify it.

Once you've built the UserControl, you can then drag and drop it into any Form.

You can then replace these controls at runtime as needed.

See this link for a decent starting tutorial. I'll update if I find a better tutorial out there.

http://www.akadia.com/services/dotnet_user_controls.html