Tab Control - Block CTRL+Tab

[Kbalz]

I'm developing a Wizard type program, and I'm flipping between steps
by using a TabControl.. buttons on each tabPage move to the next or
previous tabPage.

When I press CTRL+Tab however, the tabControl begins to cycle through
the tabPages, just as it does in Visual Studio, IE7 etc.. any tabbed
program.

I need this blocked.

I am already catching key input from the user.. when the first tabPage
of my Wizard is active, and the user presses control+a, a "secret
admin" tabPage is shown.. My boss wanted this so that he could
dynamically set some variables for the wizard. This is working very
well. So I thought I only needed to extend this to capture control
+tab key strokes, and do nothing when they are pressed..

Here is my KeyDown event for the Form:

private void adminTab_KeyDow n(object sender, KeyEventArgs e)
{
if (e.Modifiers.Eq uals(Keys.Contr ol) &
e.KeyCode.Equal s(Keys.A) & (tcBody.Selecte dTab.Equals(tab WelcomeKey)))
initAdminTab();

if (e.Modifiers.Eq uals(Keys.Contr ol) &
e.KeyCode.Equal s(Keys.Tab))
{ /* do nothing, however - the tabPages still move */ }
}

Is there any way I can block this control+tab from fliping my
tabPages? Basically using this method, it is possible to access my
adminTab from any tab, which I don't want.

I guess the alternative is to place a "onTabPageChang ed" event to my
tabcontrol, and do some flag checking there to determine if I display
my admin page or not. But that only protect my adminTab, it doesn't
really prevent the user from screwing up the entire wizard !!

Any help or suggestions ? Thanks,

[Bruce Wood]

On Feb 26, 12:26 pm, "Kbalz" <Kurtas.Balc... @gmail.comwrote :

I'm developing a Wizard type program, and I'm flipping between steps
by using a TabControl.. buttons on each tabPage move to the next or
previous tabPage.

When I press CTRL+Tab however, the tabControl begins to cycle through
the tabPages, just as it does in Visual Studio, IE7 etc.. any tabbed
program.

I need this blocked.

I am already catching key input from the user.. when the first tabPage
of my Wizard is active, and the user presses control+a, a "secret
admin" tabPage is shown.. My boss wanted this so that he could
dynamically set some variables for the wizard. This is working very
well. So I thought I only needed to extend this to capture control
+tab key strokes, and do nothing when they are pressed..

Here is my KeyDown event for the Form:

private void adminTab_KeyDow n(object sender, KeyEventArgs e)
{
if (e.Modifiers.Eq uals(Keys.Contr ol) &
e.KeyCode.Equal s(Keys.A) & (tcBody.Selecte dTab.Equals(tab WelcomeKey)))
initAdminTab();

if (e.Modifiers.Eq uals(Keys.Contr ol) &
e.KeyCode.Equal s(Keys.Tab))
{ /* do nothing, however - the tabPages still move */ }
}

Is there any way I can block this control+tab from fliping my
tabPages? Basically using this method, it is possible to access my
adminTab from any tab, which I don't want.

I guess the alternative is to place a "onTabPageChang ed" event to my
tabcontrol, and do some flag checking there to determine if I display
my admin page or not. But that only protect my adminTab, it doesn't
really prevent the user from screwing up the entire wizard !!

I know that this sounds awful this late in the game, but... any
particular reason you're using a TabControl for your wizard? All of
the wizards I've done I've made using UserControls (which are
basically Panels), showing and hiding the user controls under program
control. They're all .Dock = Dock.Fill, and I just shuffle between
them as appropriate.

I would think that TabControl also comes with the additional problem
that the user can click on any tab, any time and screw up the wizard
sequence that way....

Anyway, kind of a bummer question now that it's almost done.... :-)

[Kbalz]

On Feb 26, 3:56 pm, "Bruce Wood" <brucew...@cana da.comwrote:

On Feb 26, 12:26 pm, "Kbalz" <Kurtas.Balc... @gmail.comwrote :

I'm developing a Wizard type program, and I'm flipping between steps
by using a TabControl.. buttons on each tabPage move to the next or
previous tabPage.

When I press CTRL+Tab however, the tabControl begins to cycle through
the tabPages, just as it does in Visual Studio, IE7 etc.. any tabbed
program.

I need this blocked.

I am already catching key input from the user.. when the first tabPage
of my Wizard is active, and the user presses control+a, a "secret
admin" tabPage is shown.. My boss wanted this so that he could
dynamically set some variables for the wizard. This is working very
well. So I thought I only needed to extend this to capture control
+tab key strokes, and do nothing when they are pressed..

Here is my KeyDown event for the Form:

private void adminTab_KeyDow n(object sender, KeyEventArgs e)
{
if (e.Modifiers.Eq uals(Keys.Contr ol) &
e.KeyCode.Equal s(Keys.A) & (tcBody.Selecte dTab.Equals(tab WelcomeKey)))
initAdminTab();

if (e.Modifiers.Eq uals(Keys.Contr ol) &
e.KeyCode.Equal s(Keys.Tab))
{ /* do nothing, however - the tabPages still move */ }
}

Is there any way I can block this control+tab from fliping my
tabPages? Basically using this method, it is possible to access my
adminTab from any tab, which I don't want.

I guess the alternative is to place a "onTabPageChang ed" event to my
tabcontrol, and do some flag checking there to determine if I display
my admin page or not. But that only protect my adminTab, it doesn't
really prevent the user from screwing up the entire wizard !!

I know that this sounds awful this late in the game, but... any
particular reason you're using a TabControl for your wizard? All of
the wizards I've done I've made using UserControls (which are
basically Panels), showing and hiding the user controls under program
control. They're all .Dock = Dock.Fill, and I just shuffle between
them as appropriate.

I would think that TabControl also comes with the additional problem
that the user can click on any tab, any time and screw up the wizard
sequence that way....

Anyway, kind of a bummer question now that it's almost done.... :-)- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Belive me, if I originally knew of an easier way - I would've done
that. What I'm doing is when the form inits, I'm resizing the
tabcontrol to be larger, and position it using negative values, so
that the "tabs" are hidden and cannot be clicked. So while I'm
designing the content of the steps, I can easly switch between steps
by clicking the tabs, but at runtime, the tabs become hidden.

I got the idea from Google'ing C# Form wizards, and saw some website
for a guy who developed a wizard using tabcontrols - so I took the
idea from there and went on my way with it.

If the UserControl can give me the same design-time/run-time
capability, I have no problem switching it (this is my only project
atm). We've added another layer to this Wizard that is causing me to
have tabControls within tabPages !! Now it's getting messy fast.

[Ben Voigt]

"Kbalz" <Ku************ @gmail.comwrote in message
news:11******** *************@z 35g2000cwz.goog legroups.com...

I'm developing a Wizard type program, and I'm flipping between steps
by using a TabControl.. buttons on each tabPage move to the next or
previous tabPage.

When I press CTRL+Tab however, the tabControl begins to cycle through
the tabPages, just as it does in Visual Studio, IE7 etc.. any tabbed
program.

I need this blocked.

I am already catching key input from the user.. when the first tabPage
of my Wizard is active, and the user presses control+a, a "secret
admin" tabPage is shown.. My boss wanted this so that he could
dynamically set some variables for the wizard. This is working very
well. So I thought I only needed to extend this to capture control
+tab key strokes, and do nothing when they are pressed..

Here is my KeyDown event for the Form:

private void adminTab_KeyDow n(object sender, KeyEventArgs e)
{
if (e.Modifiers.Eq uals(Keys.Contr ol) &
e.KeyCode.Equal s(Keys.A) & (tcBody.Selecte dTab.Equals(tab WelcomeKey)))
initAdminTab();

if (e.Modifiers.Eq uals(Keys.Contr ol) &
e.KeyCode.Equal s(Keys.Tab))
{ /* do nothing, however - the tabPages still move */ }
}

Is there any way I can block this control+tab from fliping my
tabPages? Basically using this method, it is possible to access my
adminTab from any tab, which I don't want.

Did you see this?

To handle keyboard events only at the form level and not enable other
controls to receive keyboard events, set the KeyPressEventAr gs.Handled
property in your form's KeyPress event-handling method to true. Certain
keys, such as the TAB, RETURN, ESCAPE, and arrow keys are handled by
controls automatically. To have these keys raise the KeyDown event, you must
override the IsInputKey method in each control on your form. The code for
the override of the IsInputKey would need to determine if one of the special
keys is pressed and return a value of true.

[Bruce Wood]

On Feb 26, 1:08 pm, "Kbalz" <Kurtas.Balc... @gmail.comwrote :

On Feb 26, 3:56 pm, "Bruce Wood" <brucew...@cana da.comwrote:

On Feb 26, 12:26 pm, "Kbalz" <Kurtas.Balc... @gmail.comwrote :

I'm developing a Wizard type program, and I'm flipping between steps
by using a TabControl.. buttons on each tabPage move to the next or
previous tabPage.

I know that this sounds awful this late in the game, but... any
particular reason you're using a TabControl for your wizard? All of
the wizards I've done I've made using UserControls (which are
basically Panels), showing and hiding the user controls under program
control. They're all .Dock = Dock.Fill, and I just shuffle between
them as appropriate.

I would think that TabControl also comes with the additional problem
that the user can click on any tab, any time and screw up the wizard
sequence that way....

Anyway, kind of a bummer question now that it's almost done.... :-)

Belive me, if I originally knew of an easier way - I would've done
that. What I'm doing is when the form inits, I'm resizing the
tabcontrol to be larger, and position it using negative values, so
that the "tabs" are hidden and cannot be clicked. So while I'm
designing the content of the steps, I can easly switch between steps
by clicking the tabs, but at runtime, the tabs become hidden.

I got the idea from Google'ing C# Form wizards, and saw some website
for a guy who developed a wizard using tabcontrols - so I took the
idea from there and went on my way with it.

Yikes. Glad I didn't find that one when I was doing my initial foray
into wizards....

If the UserControl can give me the same design-time/run-time
capability, I have no problem switching it (this is my only project
atm). We've added another layer to this Wizard that is causing me to
have tabControls within tabPages !! Now it's getting messy fast.

Personally, I'd switch.

Create a UserControl for each panel you want to show. You should be
able to just cut all of the stuff off of your current tab and past it
onto the UserControl surface. Your Wizard then becomes an empty shell
into which you drop all of the UserControls (Dock = None). No need to
see them all clearly: just be able to see that they're all there.

Then, at run time, just set all UserControls to Dock = Fill, and
Hide() all of them but the initial panel.

I even created a little push-down stack in the main Wizard app that
stores references to the UserControls already visited, so when the
user presses Back I can pop the top one off the stack and show the
next one down on the stack. This allows you to deal gracefully handle
"conversati ons" that branch off into various possibilities and then
reconverge.

I also created an interface / interfaces so that the individual
controls can be marked with capabilities that tell the enclosing
Wizard what services they can offer (e.g. "should I offer a Print...
menu item when this panel is showing?").

This gives you a separate design surface for each "page" you want to
show the user (each is a UserControl) and reduces your Wizard
application .cs itself to just the plumbing needed to link them
together, and your ctl-a trick, of course.

[Kbalz]

On Feb 26, 5:08 pm, "Bruce Wood" <brucew...@cana da.comwrote:

On Feb 26, 1:08 pm, "Kbalz" <Kurtas.Balc... @gmail.comwrote :

On Feb 26, 3:56 pm, "Bruce Wood" <brucew...@cana da.comwrote:

On Feb 26, 12:26 pm, "Kbalz" <Kurtas.Balc... @gmail.comwrote :

I'm developing a Wizard type program, and I'm flipping between steps
by using a TabControl.. buttons on each tabPage move to the next or
previous tabPage.

I know that this sounds awful this late in the game, but... any
particular reason you're using a TabControl for your wizard? All of
the wizards I've done I've made using UserControls (which are
basically Panels), showing and hiding the user controls under program
control. They're all .Dock = Dock.Fill, and I just shuffle between
them as appropriate.

I would think that TabControl also comes with the additional problem
that the user can click on any tab, any time and screw up the wizard
sequence that way....

Anyway, kind of a bummer question now that it's almost done.... :-)

Belive me, if I originally knew of an easier way - I would've done
that. What I'm doing is when the form inits, I'm resizing the
tabcontrol to be larger, and position it using negative values, so
that the "tabs" are hidden and cannot be clicked. So while I'm
designing the content of the steps, I can easly switch between steps
by clicking the tabs, but at runtime, the tabs become hidden.

I got the idea from Google'ing C# Form wizards, and saw some website
for a guy who developed a wizard using tabcontrols - so I took the
idea from there and went on my way with it.

Yikes. Glad I didn't find that one when I was doing my initial foray
into wizards....

If the UserControl can give me the same design-time/run-time
capability, I have no problem switching it (this is my only project
atm). We've added another layer to this Wizard that is causing me to
have tabControls within tabPages !! Now it's getting messy fast.

Personally, I'd switch.

Create a UserControl for each panel you want to show. You should be
able to just cut all of the stuff off of your current tab and past it
onto the UserControl surface. Your Wizard then becomes an empty shell
into which you drop all of the UserControls (Dock = None). No need to
see them all clearly: just be able to see that they're all there.

Then, at run time, just set all UserControls to Dock = Fill, and
Hide() all of them but the initial panel.

I even created a little push-down stack in the main Wizard app that
stores references to the UserControls already visited, so when the
user presses Back I can pop the top one off the stack and show the
next one down on the stack. This allows you to deal gracefully handle
"conversati ons" that branch off into various possibilities and then
reconverge.

I also created an interface / interfaces so that the individual
controls can be marked with capabilities that tell the enclosing
Wizard what services they can offer (e.g. "should I offer a Print...
menu item when this panel is showing?").

This gives you a separate design surface for each "page" you want to
show the user (each is a UserControl) and reduces your Wizard
application .cs itself to just the plumbing needed to link them
together, and your ctl-a trick, of course.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Thanks for the reply. I can kind of visualize how that approach works
during design time, but I could possibly be having 20 possible "pages"
to show the user. Wouldn't the design-time view in VS'05 get very
cluttered and hard to quickly find which page is which? In the first
take at my wizard, I had started close to how you described it. I
didn't know about the Dock = Fill property however until a few weeks
ago after I switched it all to tabcontrol. Instead I was setting all
of the Position properties to a set Point, and making them all the
same Size - this worked with an un-sizable Form pertty well until I
got too many pages.

I've protected my ctrl+a page by using flags, so I'm safe there. Maybe
if you could email me a screen shot of a design-time example of a ton
of UserControls for one of your wizards, this will make my switch a
little easier with something to go by. Thanks,

[Kbalz]

On Feb 27, 8:54 am, "Kbalz" <Kurtas.Balc... @gmail.comwrote :

On Feb 26, 5:08 pm, "Bruce Wood" <brucew...@cana da.comwrote:

On Feb 26, 1:08 pm, "Kbalz" <Kurtas.Balc... @gmail.comwrote :

On Feb 26, 3:56 pm, "Bruce Wood" <brucew...@cana da.comwrote:
On Feb 26, 12:26 pm, "Kbalz" <Kurtas.Balc... @gmail.comwrote :

I'm developing a Wizard type program, and I'm flipping between steps
by using a TabControl.. buttons on each tabPage move to the next or
previous tabPage.

I know that this sounds awful this late in the game, but... any
particular reason you're using a TabControl for your wizard? All of
the wizards I've done I've made using UserControls (which are
basically Panels), showing and hiding the user controls under program
control. They're all .Dock = Dock.Fill, and I just shuffle between
them as appropriate.

I would think that TabControl also comes with the additional problem
that the user can click on any tab, any time and screw up the wizard
sequence that way....

Anyway, kind of a bummer question now that it's almost done.... :-)

Belive me, if I originally knew of an easier way - I would've done
that. What I'm doing is when the form inits, I'm resizing the
tabcontrol to be larger, and position it using negative values, so
that the "tabs" are hidden and cannot be clicked. So while I'm
designing the content of the steps, I can easly switch between steps
by clicking the tabs, but at runtime, the tabs become hidden.

I got the idea from Google'ing C# Form wizards, and saw some website
for a guy who developed a wizard using tabcontrols - so I took the
idea from there and went on my way with it.

Yikes. Glad I didn't find that one when I was doing my initial foray
into wizards....

If the UserControl can give me the same design-time/run-time
capability, I have no problem switching it (this is my only project
atm). We've added another layer to this Wizard that is causing me to
have tabControls within tabPages !! Now it's getting messy fast.

Personally, I'd switch.

Create a UserControl for each panel you want to show. You should be
able to just cut all of the stuff off of your current tab and past it
onto the UserControl surface. Your Wizard then becomes an empty shell
into which you drop all of the UserControls (Dock = None). No need to
see them all clearly: just be able to see that they're all there.

Then, at run time, just set all UserControls to Dock = Fill, and
Hide() all of them but the initial panel.

I even created a little push-down stack in the main Wizard app that
stores references to the UserControls already visited, so when the
user presses Back I can pop the top one off the stack and show the
next one down on the stack. This allows you to deal gracefully handle
"conversati ons" that branch off into various possibilities and then
reconverge.

I also created an interface / interfaces so that the individual
controls can be marked with capabilities that tell the enclosing
Wizard what services they can offer (e.g. "should I offer a Print...
menu item when this panel is showing?").

This gives you a separate design surface for each "page" you want to
show the user (each is a UserControl) and reduces your Wizard
application .cs itself to just the plumbing needed to link them
together, and your ctl-a trick, of course.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Thanks for the reply. I can kind of visualize how that approach works
during design time, but I could possibly be having 20 possible "pages"
to show the user. Wouldn't the design-time view in VS'05 get very
cluttered and hard to quickly find which page is which? In the first
take at my wizard, I had started close to how you described it. I
didn't know about the Dock = Fill property however until a few weeks
ago after I switched it all to tabcontrol. Instead I was setting all
of the Position properties to a set Point, and making them all the
same Size - this worked with an un-sizable Form pertty well until I
got too many pages.

I've protected my ctrl+a page by using flags, so I'm safe there. Maybe
if you could email me a screen shot of a design-time example of a ton
of UserControls for one of your wizards, this will make my switch a
little easier with something to go by. Thanks,- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I started to jump into a fresh wizard using UserControl.. until an
hour ago, I thought this was something I could just find in the
toolbox and drag and drop in my existing form!! I now see I must add a
new UserControl.cs to my project.. and I'm guessing I would add a
UserControl for each step in my wizard, then somehow get them to all
show in my form.

I'll keep trying a few things, but this is already looking 100% easier.

[Ben Voigt]

>Thanks for the reply. I can kind of visualize how that approach works

>during design time, but I could possibly be having 20 possible "pages"
to show the user. Wouldn't the design-time view in VS'05 get very
cluttered and hard to quickly find which page is which? In the first
take at my wizard, I had started close to how you described it. I
didn't know about the Dock = Fill property however until a few weeks
ago after I switched it all to tabcontrol. Instead I was setting all
of the Position properties to a set Point, and making them all the
same Size - this worked with an un-sizable Form pertty well until I
got too many pages.

I've protected my ctrl+a page by using flags, so I'm safe there. Maybe
if you could email me a screen shot of a design-time example of a ton
of UserControls for one of your wizards, this will make my switch a
little easier with something to go by. Thanks,- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I started to jump into a fresh wizard using UserControl.. until an
hour ago, I thought this was something I could just find in the
toolbox and drag and drop in my existing form!! I now see I must add a
new UserControl.cs to my project.. and I'm guessing I would add a
UserControl for each step in my wizard, then somehow get them to all
show in my form.

You could do that too.... with the predefined Panel control. But then you'd
need to mess with raising and lowering the different panels in the designer.

>
I'll keep trying a few things, but this is already looking 100% easier.

[Kbalz]

On Feb 27, 11:11 am, "Ben Voigt" <[e-mail] spamwrote:

Thanks for the reply. I can kind of visualize how that approach works
during design time, but I could possibly be having 20 possible "pages"
to show the user. Wouldn't the design-time view in VS'05 get very
cluttered and hard to quickly find which page is which? In the first
take at my wizard, I had started close to how you described it. I
didn't know about the Dock = Fill property however until a few weeks
ago after I switched it all to tabcontrol. Instead I was setting all
of the Position properties to a set Point, and making them all the
same Size - this worked with an un-sizable Form pertty well until I
got too many pages.

I've protected my ctrl+a page by using flags, so I'm safe there. Maybe
if you could email me a screen shot of a design-time example of a ton
of UserControls for one of your wizards, this will make my switch a
little easier with something to go by. Thanks,- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I started to jump into a fresh wizard using UserControl.. until an
hour ago, I thought this was something I could just find in the
toolbox and drag and drop in my existing form!! I now see I must add a
new UserControl.cs to my project.. and I'm guessing I would add a
UserControl for each step in my wizard, then somehow get them to all
show in my form.

You could do that too.... with the predefined Panel control. But then you'd
need to mess with raising and lowering the different panels in the designer.

I'll keep trying a few things, but this is already looking 100% easier.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Thats what I was doing with my first take on the wizard, I didn't care
for it that much, but again I didn't know about dock = fill ! I'm
still having trouble getting a UserControl I make into a Form - just
got back from lunch and going to read a few things.

[Kbalz]

On Feb 27, 12:45 pm, "Kbalz" <Kurtas.Balc... @gmail.comwrote :

On Feb 27, 11:11 am, "Ben Voigt" <[e-mail] spamwrote:

>Thanks for the reply. I can kind of visualize how that approach works
>during design time, but I could possibly be having 20 possible "pages"
>to show the user. Wouldn't the design-time view in VS'05 get very
>cluttered and hard to quickly find which page is which? In the first
>take at my wizard, I had started close to how you described it. I
>didn't know about the Dock = Fill property however until a few weeks
>ago after I switched it all to tabcontrol. Instead I was setting all
>of the Position properties to a set Point, and making them all the
>same Size - this worked with an un-sizable Form pertty well until I
>got too many pages.

>I've protected my ctrl+a page by using flags, so I'm safe there. Maybe
>if you could email me a screen shot of a design-time example of a ton
>of UserControls for one of your wizards, this will make my switch a
>little easier with something to go by. Thanks,- Hide quoted text -

>- Show quoted text -

I started to jump into a fresh wizard using UserControl.. until an
hour ago, I thought this was something I could just find in the
toolbox and drag and drop in my existing form!! I now see I must add a
new UserControl.cs to my project.. and I'm guessing I would add a
UserControl for each step in my wizard, then somehow get them to all
show in my form.

You could do that too.... with the predefined Panel control. But then you'd
need to mess with raising and lowering the different panels in the designer.

I'll keep trying a few things, but this is already looking 100% easier.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Thats what I was doing with my first take on the wizard, I didn't care
for it that much, but again I didn't know about dock = fill ! I'm
still having trouble getting a UserControl I make into a Form - just
got back from lunch and going to read a few things.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Wow this is much easier to manage using UserControls.. its kind of sad
I couldn't find any great articles on this method earlier!! This
solves my Tab problem, and probably many problems I was bound to come
accross before. Thanks a ton !