Hi all,
Here in this thread,we can discuss the practical issues in adding the controls to the windows forms in VS 2005.

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Sathish Kumar.R
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HI Sathish,
How can I add items to the System Menu of a form in VS 2005?Can anyone help me?

To do this, you can use use iterop to access the GetSystemMenu and AppendMenu Win32 APIs. You also need to override the form's WndProc method to catch and act on the menu message. This idea was posted in the Microsoft newsgroups by Lion Shi.

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Sathish Kumar.R
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Hi Sathish,
Well said.Its working.How can I have a form with no title bar, but yet keep the resizing borders?

Hi Deeban,
Well.Set your form's Text and ControlBox properties.

myForm.Text = "";
myForm.ControlBox = false;

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Sathish Kumar.R
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Hi sathish,
I don't want to have the Close box on my form's title bar. How do I remove this system menu box?Any idea?

Hi,
Its very simple.Set the property Form.ControlBox to false.Thats it.

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Sathish Kumar.R
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Hi Sathish,
How do I change my application's icon?Any idea?

Hi,
In the Solution Explorer window, you'll see a file called app.ico in your project. This file contains your application icon. You can change this to a different file in the project properties screen which you see by right-clicking the project node in the Solution Explorer, and selecting Properties..

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Sathish Kumar.R
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Hi Sathish,
Good going. How can I tell if a form is closed from the controlbox (system menu) or from a call to Form.Close?can you tell me?

Hi Deeban,
One way to do this is to override the form's WndProc method and check for WM_SYSCOMMAND and SC_CLOSE. Looking for WM_CLOSE in the override is not sufficient as WM_CLOSE is seen in both cases. A sample is available for download (C#, VB).
public const int SC_CLOSE = 0xF060;
public const int WM_SYSCOMMAND = 0x0112;
//_closeClick is a bool member of the form initially set false...

// It can be tested in the Closing event to see how the closing came about.

protected override void WndProc(ref System.Windows.Forms.Message m)
{
if(m.Msg == WM_SYSCOMMAND && (int)m.WParam == SC_CLOSE)

this._closeClick = true;
base.WndProc(ref m);
}

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Sathish Kumar.R
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Hi Sathish,
I have two forms. I want to access a textbox on one form from the other form?How can I do it?

Hi Sathish,
One way to do this is to make the TextBox either a public property or a public field. Then you will be able to access it through the instance of its parent form. So, if TextBox1 is a public member of FormA and myFormA is an instance of FormA, then you can use code such as

[VB.NET]

Dim strValue as String = myFormA.TextBox1.Text
[C#]

string strValue = myFormA.TextBox1.Text;

anywhere myFormA is known. Here is a VB project illustrating this technique.

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Sathish Kumar.R
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Hi Sathish,
How do I create a non-modal top level form that always stays on top of all the app's windows (like the VS.Net find dialog)?

Hi Deeban,
Thats a good question.Now let me tell you the answer.Make your main form the "Owner" of the form in question. Refer to Form.Owner in class reference for more information.

[C#]

findReplaceDialog.Owner = this; // Your main form.

findReplaceDialog.TopLevel = false;

[VB.Net]

findReplaceDialog.Owner = Me ' Your main form.

findReplaceDialog.TopLevel = False

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Sathish Kumar.R
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Hi ,
How can I display a form that is 'TopMost' for only my application, but not other applications?

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Sathish Kumar.R
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Hi Sathish,
Sorry I dont know sathish.

Hi Deeban,
Its ok,I have found the solution.
We can do this by setting the child form's TopMost to False and setting its Owner property to the Main Form.

[C#]

Form1 f = new Form1();
f.TopMost = false;
f.Owner = this;
f.Show();

[VB.NET]

dim f as New Form1()
f.TopMost = False
f.Owner = Me
f.Show()

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Sathish Kumar.R
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Hi Deeban
The framework automatically resizes the form if the current Font size during runtime is different from the font size in design-time. It however doesn't auto size when the resolution changes. But it should be easy for you to accomplish. You could derive a custom Form, provide a "ScreenResolutionBase" property that could return the current screen resolution (Screen.PrimarScreen.Bounds will give you this). This value will get serialized in code during design time. Then during runtime in the Form's OnLoad you could check for the current screen resolution and resize the Form appropriately.

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Sathish Kumar.R
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Hi Sathish,
How can I restrict or control the size of my form?