C# Dialogs, Part 2 - Custom Dialogs [Beginner]

OK, so in Part 1 we went over the MessageBox that C# offers. As simple and easy as it is to use MessageBox, sometimes you need something more customized to your needs. Although MessageBox is extremely simple to use, it is almost as easy to create your very own dialog and use whatever you want.

The first thing we must do is create a new project. I named my project "Custom Dialog", but any name will do. Once your project is created and ready, the first step is to create a new windows form to be our dialog, which is a simple process. All you need to do is right-click on your solution in the Solution explorer, go to Add, then Windows Form. The screenshot below shows you exactly how its done.

Now we need to work with our new form, first go ahead and put a label on it, representing the question or dialog text. Once the label is all squared away, we need to add the buttons. Adding the button is easy enough, but we need to change them in order for them to work for the dialog. Once you have your buttons, you need to change a property you may not actually know about, the DialogResult property. If you recall, in part one, you learned about the enum called DialogResult, and believe it or not, this property correlates directly to that.

As you can see, the options for this properties are the same as the values in the DialogResult enum. For our dialog, I set one button to return Ok, and to be a little tricky the other button returns nothing. This way, the user can only select one option, which will make since later.

That is really all you have to do in order to build a custom dialog, but now we have to use it. Windows forms are actually just like any other class, you have to create a new instance, then you can use it. So we need to do just that, after you create an instance of your new form, the key in using the form as a dialog is the ShowDialog() method. In C#, all forms have this method, and when it is used instead of the normal Show() method, it will act just like a message box dialog. So when the user pushes a button, the form is closed and a result is returned. The code looks an awful lot like our MessageBox code:

CustomForm CustForm = new CustomForm();
if (CustForm.ShowDialog() == DialogResult.OK)
{
    MessageBox.Show("You know it!");
}

As you can see, we have 2 buttons, but as I said only one returns a value. This way no one can lie about who has the best tutorials.

Comments

C# Snippet - Shuffling a Dictionary [Beginner]

Randomizing something can be a daunting task, especially with all the algorithms out there. However, sometimes you just need to shuffle things up, in a simple, yet effective manner. Today we are going to take a quick look at an easy and simple way to randomize a dictionary, which is most likely something that you may be using in a complex application. The tricky thing about ordering dictionaries is that...well they are not ordered to begin with. Typically they are a chaotic collection of key/value pairs. There is no first element or last element, just elements. This is why it is a little tricky to randomize them. Before we get started, we need to build a quick dictionary. For this tutorial, we will be doing an extremely simple string/int dictionary, but rest assured the steps we take can be used for any kind of dictionary you can come up with, no matter what object types you use. Dictionary < String , int > origin = new Dictionary < string , int >();

C# Snippet - The Many Uses Of The Using Keyword [Beginner]

What is the first thing that pops into your mind when you think of the using keyword for C#? Probably those lines that always appear at the top of C# code files - the lines that import types from other namespaces into your code. But while that is the most common use of the using keyword, it is not the only one. Today we are going to take a look at the different uses of the using keyword and what they are useful for. The Using Directive There are two main categories of use for the using keyword - as a "Using Directive" and as a "Using Statement". The lines at the top of a C# file are directives, but that is not the only place they can go. They can also go inside of a namespace block, but they have to be before any other elements declared in the namespace (i.e., you can't add a using statement after a class declaration). Namespace Importing This is by far the most common use of the keyword - it is rare that you see a C# file that does not h

C# WPF Printing Part 2 - Pagination [Intermediate]

About two weeks ago, we had a tutorial here at SOTC on the basics of printing in WPF . It covered the standard stuff, like popping the print dialog, and what you needed to do to print visuals (both created in XAML and on the fly). But really, that's barely scratching the surface - any decent printing system in pretty much any application needs to be able to do a lot more than that. So today, we are going to take one more baby step forward into the world of printing - we are going to take a look at pagination. The main class that we will need to do pagination is the DocumentPaginator . I mentioned this class very briefly in the previous tutorial, but only in the context of the printing methods on PrintDialog , PrintVisual (which we focused on last time) and PrintDocument (which we will be focusing on today). This PrintDocument function takes a DocumentPaginator to print - and this is why we need to create one. Unfortunately, making a DocumentPaginator is not as easy as

C# 4 All

Search This Blog