Dynamically-created menus and mdi children

[Steve_Black]

I posted a similar message earlier but we've geared away from the
original topic somewhat so I thought I'd post again in hopes of getting
input from others.

I am creating a MenuStrip dynamically. For each ToolStripMenuIt em, I'm
adding an event handler so that the same routine gets called regardless
of which menu item was clicked. All of this works great - my menu is
being loaded properly and my routine gets called properly.

Within the Tag property of each ToolStripMenuIt em I store the name of a
form that I want opened as an mdi child of my main form. I couldn't
get this to work properly, so for testing purposes I've reduced my
problem to the following scenario (which really has nothing to do with
the Tag property or the fact that my form names are stored in
variables):

Behind my main form I created the following routine:

Private Sub LoadForm()
Dim frm As New frmTest
With frm
.MdiParent = Me
.Left = 0
.Top = 0
.Show()
End With
End Sub

I also added a button to my form and in the click event of the button,
I call the above routine.

In my routine that gets called when a menu item is clicked, I call the
same LoadForm routine.

If I click my button, frmTest loads as an mdi child as it should.
If I click a menu item, my form does not get loaded (and yes, I've
confirmed that the routine is getting called).
Incidentally, if I comment out the line that says '.MdiParent = Me', my
form will open as a normal Windows form. However, as soon as I
uncomment out that line, my form will not load.

I'm puzzled as to why such a simple thing would work when I click a
button but not when I click a menu item.

As an aside, I tried loading a menu with static menu items (instead of
loading it dynamically), and everything worked fine - my mdi child form
loaded properly.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Steve

[tommaso.gastaldi]

Good. I am looking forward to knowing...

(PS: a recommendation: when you create the new app do enforce strict ON)

[Steve_Black]

Okay, I created the new app and it worked. I then figured out what the
differences were and figured out what caused it to not work in my
original app, although I'm still not really sure why.

In my first app, my main form is not the first form that opens. I open
a Login form first and authenticate the user. If the user enters a
valid username/password, I open the Main Form and close the Login form.
In my project properties under the 'Application' tab I had changed my
Startup Form to be my Login form and in the 'Shutdown mode' option I
changed the default (When startup form closes) to 'When last form
closes'.

That seems to be what caused the problem because I am able to duplicate
the problem in my second application.

My second application loads my main form first, and duing the load of
that form I open the Login form with ShowDialog. If the user
authenticates properly I pass back to the Main Form a result of
DialogResult.Ye s - otherwise I pass back DialogBox.No. If the user
does not authenticate properly (after 3 tries) I just close the main
form and I'm done. Otherwise my main form continues to load and I load
my main menu. This works fine.

If you've got any idea as to why my first way doesn't load the mdi
children properly, I'd be curious to know. I suspect my second
approach is actually the better approach anyway, so I'm going to stick
with it.

Thanks a lot for the help.

By the way, I noticed that if I open my mdi child it gets places at
Left=0, Top=0 as I specified in my code. However, if I then close my
child form and re-open it, it seems to be positioned lower and to the
right, as if the first form were still opened and the two forms were
being cascaded. My guess is that this is something fairly easy to fix
and I haven't actually looked around for an answer yet, but I thought
I'd ask in the hopes that you know offhand.

Thanks again,

Steve

[tommaso.gastaldi]

glad to hear that :)

-tommaso

Private Sub LoadForm()
Dim frm As New frmParticipantS earch
With frm
.MdiParent = Me
.StartPosition = FormStartPositi on.Manual '<--
.Location = New Point(0, 0)
'.Left = 0
'.Top = 0
.Show()
End With
End Sub