A Placeholder for Forms

[wibs]

Apologies if this has been asked before, but I could not find it in search.

I would like to have a form that has a Menu at the top, a placeholder for forms, and a status area underneath.

I have created the form, the Menu, and the status area, but I am a bit stumped on the placeholder for forms.

Imagine a 5" x 3" box on a Form with a graphical logo in it. A Menu option is then selected and the logo is then replaced with a form containing the controls the user needs to complete the action. Another Menu option is selected, and another form with different controls is then presented in the placeholder, and so on. When the Action is completed by clicking an OK button on these sub-forms, it disappears to be replaced by the logo again.

Can anyone advise me on how to put a placeholder on a form, so that Menu choices will place Form2, Form3, Form4 etc into that placeholder?

Thanks in advance

Wibs

[Zedna]

You can use child GUIs but I think it's better to use Tab control in this case.

[wibs]

You can use child GUIs but I think it's better to use Tab control in this case.

Thanks for that Zedna. After delving a little deeper I see that there are two container controls for the GUI, Group and Tab, and I think Group would serve my needs better, as I am already using a Tab control for the status messages, and two look a little inelegant.

So just as a test, I placed a single Group control on a form, with a single button within it, then I set the Group Control properties, Enabled and Visible, both to FALSE. On running the Form (I am using Koda Form Design, btw), I was a little surprised to see the Group control still quite visible on the Form.

How do I hide a Group control from sight? And what exactly is the function of the Visible property for a Group control?

(I am imagining around 20 Group controls on a form, all in the same location, all hidden, then by selecting a particular menu option one of them then becomes visible).

TIA

Wibs

Edited January 8, 2009 by wibs

[martin]

Thanks for that Zedna. After delving a little deeper I see that there are two container controls for the GUI, Group and Tab, and I think Group would serve my needs better, as I am already using a Tab control for the status messages, and two look a little inelegant.

So just as a test, I placed a single Group control on a form, with a single button within it, then I set the Group Control properties, Enabled and Visible, both to FALSE. On running the Form (I am using Koda Form Design, btw), I was a little surprised to see the Group control still quite visible on the Form.

How do I hide a Group control from sight? And what exactly is the function of the Visible property for a Group control?

(I am imagining around 20 Group controls on a form, all in the same location, all hidden, then by selecting a particular menu option one of them then becomes visible).

TIA

Wibs

I would prefer the approach of having information on each form stored somewhere, maybe an ini file, and creating each form dynamically. Each form could have a common button used for "Continue" say, and the information stored for the form could include what has to be done when that button is pressed. Gque had a project where he needed to create lots of buttons and menus dynamically from ini files, and he created a nice application using OnEVent mode where he dynamically set the events for the dynamically created buttons.

Another approach would be to have each form designed using html. The you can have a file for each form and use IE functions to display the forms in an embedded browser. The start form with a logo would then be simply another form with whatever graphics you wanted. The menus could be incorporated into the forms.

I'm no expert with the IE functions so this might not be a great idea.