Forms and Panels don't respond to help requests?

[Keith]

Hello,

Why don't forms and panels respond to help requests? I have a basic form
showing the Help button in the title bar, a HelpProvider, a panel and a
button; and the panel and button are identically configured to show help on
the HelpProvider. When I use the Help button and click on the button the
..chm is opened; when I click on the panel (or the background of the form),
nothing happens at all.

In addition, if I add an EventHandler to the HelpRequested handler of the
panel, it never gets called either.

So is there some magic trick here, is this a bug or some mysterious
"feature?" I've tried this with labels and textboxes, comboboxes,
pictureboxes, radio buttons, trackbars; all manner of UI controls. Why are
panels and forms different?

Anyone have some insight or suggestions?

Keith

 

[Keith]

So,

No one knows anything about this? Do I need to post a project to illustrate
my point?

k

 

[Andrew Smith \(Infragistics\)]

I don't think this has anything to do with .net per se. The help button is
in the titlebar by virtue of the form being created with the
ws_ex_contexthelp style so the os is handling the display and interaction
with the help button. It seems that any window/control that has an extended
window style of ws_ex_controlparent will never receive a wm_help as a result
of clicking on it with the help button activated. It might be possible to
derive your own panel, form, groupbox, etc. that override the createparams
and strip out this exstyle but I'm not sure if this will cause any other
issues with those classes. Also, this will introduce an unmanaged code
requirement on those classes which may affect your deployment depending on
how you distribute your app.

 

[Keith]

Andrew,

Thanks for the reply. I'll look into deriving a class and see if it helps.

Keith