S
Scott McChesney
Hi, folks. I've been searching the 'net for a while, and I'm not finding
what I want, so I thought I'd ask for some help here. Perhaps I'm looking
at this wrong.
I'm developing an application, and the goal is to get an Outlook-style app.
So I've been searching through Outlook, seeing everything that's available,
and developing a plan of attack. My initial thought was to develop each
content piece as a UserControl, and I'd just load what I wanted. Seemed
simple enough.
However, when I started looking at all the events and other things I would
have to code into my base UserControl so that I could talk to the main form
appropriately - interacting with menu items, toolbars, and all the other
controls - that seemed like a poor idea.
So I lit upon the concept of using a MDI parent form and maximized child
forms with no title bar. The problem is that maximized child forms still
show the standard MDI child indicators - a control box,
maximize/minimize/close buttons, etc. - even though I set them all to
"False" and cleared out the form title.
So here I am. I haven't gone too far down any road yet - I'm still trying
to conceptualize - but this MDI child idea has really grabbed me as a decent
idea. I know that third-party controls exist to turn MDI children into a
VS.NET-style tabbed display, so I feel the basic idea is possible/feasible.
Am I faced with a ton of subclassing? Not that I necessarily mind it - I
did it all the time in VB 6 - but I was hoping there was a slightly more
elegant way. Another reason was because I didn't want to get into a lot of
message handling, and I feel that it's more than just eating the WM_NCPAINT
and WM_NCACTIVATE messages. Maybe not.
Any help would be appreciated.
TIA
- Scott
what I want, so I thought I'd ask for some help here. Perhaps I'm looking
at this wrong.
I'm developing an application, and the goal is to get an Outlook-style app.
So I've been searching through Outlook, seeing everything that's available,
and developing a plan of attack. My initial thought was to develop each
content piece as a UserControl, and I'd just load what I wanted. Seemed
simple enough.
However, when I started looking at all the events and other things I would
have to code into my base UserControl so that I could talk to the main form
appropriately - interacting with menu items, toolbars, and all the other
controls - that seemed like a poor idea.
So I lit upon the concept of using a MDI parent form and maximized child
forms with no title bar. The problem is that maximized child forms still
show the standard MDI child indicators - a control box,
maximize/minimize/close buttons, etc. - even though I set them all to
"False" and cleared out the form title.
So here I am. I haven't gone too far down any road yet - I'm still trying
to conceptualize - but this MDI child idea has really grabbed me as a decent
idea. I know that third-party controls exist to turn MDI children into a
VS.NET-style tabbed display, so I feel the basic idea is possible/feasible.
Am I faced with a ton of subclassing? Not that I necessarily mind it - I
did it all the time in VB 6 - but I was hoping there was a slightly more
elegant way. Another reason was because I didn't want to get into a lot of
message handling, and I feel that it's more than just eating the WM_NCPAINT
and WM_NCACTIVATE messages. Maybe not.
Any help would be appreciated.
TIA
- Scott
