Making areas of forms visible/invisible

Question

Hey there Having real trouble trying to even explain what I need help with but I hope someone can maybe give me some help. I think basically what I want is a tab control but I'd like to be able to have no border around it and be able to customise the tabs so that it doesn't look like a regular set of tabs. I'd like to have different things appear in one space of the form and having a tabControl seemed like the only way I could have all the data in the same spot but be able to have all the parts in their seperate tabs and be able to work on each tab seperately. I hope that made some sense.... I looked at panels but I can't put one on top of the other without it going inside. Also I would have to move the panel everytime I wanted to see what was in it and then put it back on top/under the other. The same happens with group boxes. Not sure how well that was explained but any help would be much appreciated! Ian.

ianblack12 · Answer

Ah I think I see what you mean. It's jsut that everytime i wanted to edit the design I would then have to resize everything although I guess that isn't really too much of a hardship. I also thought of just having groups that need to be on top of eachother spaced out so that I could work on each easily and then just set their positions like you said at startup of program. However it makes it difficult to get a feel for what the program will look like while designing it. Just now I've just gone with the tabControl. I did notice that you can buy custom tabControl menus etc. So I guess if you want to a custom tabControl then its something you need to code yourself and I have no idea where to begin doing that or how difficult it would be. I guess since there are commercial products for this task that it isn't a simple thing to do. Thanks for the reply!

MythicalMe · Answer

If you're having trouble with the designer it sometimes happens using the groupboxes then the answer is to maintain the visibility location and size within your code. My approach would be to use the designer to place all of the controls that you need to use within it make it small and invisible then in the form_load event size and position the groupbox as you need it.