MFC Tab control without tabs?

Question

I'm wanting to make something like a tab control, but without visible tabs at the top.

I would prefer to have the tabs selected from a list or tree at the left hand side of the page, something like this...

Selecting the list/tree item at the left changes everything on the right-hand side of the dialog.

I know I could do this by individually showing/hiding all the fields on the RHS, depending on the selected view, but this is unmanageable to design, when there are at least 10 different designs. C++ doesn't let me design groups and make them visible/invisible in one go. I would prefer to design them as totally separate dialog resources, and then bring them in, like a tab control.

I believe Windows Forms has a ContentControl, which is like a tab control without the tabs, which sounds perfect, but MFC doesn't seem to have this.

Is there a way to do this nicely? Or maybe even a 3rd party control to handle it?

Answer 1

In MFC you would do this by making a child modeless dialog for each group. For each dialog turn off the titlebar style and border style and it will blend in to the parent window instead of looking like a dialog. Create all the dialogs, then use ShowWindow to show/hide one at a time.

Minor detail: Put an invisible control (like a group box) on the parent window to serve as a landmark. When you create each dialog use MoveWindow to position and size it on the landmark.

Use window style WS_EX_CONTROLPARENT in the parent window to help with tab key navigation from parent to child.

Answer 2

Yes you can using DIALOG resources. Set the DIALOG Style to Child, Border to None, Title Bar to False. You can then add implementation classes/files for each DIALOG. The dialogs are then inserted/removed to and fro the parent as a child components by setting the containing window as the dialog's parent (ie, SetParent)