How make Windows form controls draw all at once so doesn't load "ugly"?

[Ronald S. Cook]

In my Windows app, when you click to load a form, it kind of draws part of
some controls as it's doing other things and then finally draws everything.

This looks bad.

Is there a way I can just keep everything blank (or have a "Loading
screen..." message) until every is ready to display and THEN display it?

Thanks for any help,
Ron

 

[Alberto Poblacion]

In my Windows app, when you click to load a form, it kind of draws part of
some controls as it's doing other things and then finally draws
everything.

This looks bad.

Is there a way I can just keep everything blank (or have a "Loading
screen..." message) until every is ready to display and THEN display it?

If you are using the Framework Version 2.0, you will see an improvement
if you set on the form the property DoubleBuffered = true.

 

[Bruce Wood]

In my Windows app, when you click to load a form, it kind of draws part of
some controls as it's doing other things and then finally draws everything.

What are the "other things" that the form is doing while it's loading?
It sounds to me as though you're doing some heavy lifting on the UI
thread, and your program could benefit by farming off some work to a
background thread.

This looks bad.

Usually what "looks bad" is that the UI freezes up while the form is
loading, which is a signal that something you're doing on the OnLoad
method should instead be in a background thread.