How to make the MDIChild form appears if there is a control on the MDIParent form in VB.Net?

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Greetings,

I have been to an illogical programming case:

I have created MDIParent form "Form1" and then add another form "Form2" to the project then set "Form1" as the parent form of "Form2" on the "Form1" load event through the following code:

VB

Dim ChildForm As New Form2
ChildForm.MdiParent = Me  'Which is Form1
ChildForm.Show()

Now I added a panel "Panel1" to the parent form "Form1" and set its Dock property to Full in order to cover all the "Form1".

What is weird is that at the load event of "Form1", "Form2" should appear, but what happened was that it didn`t appear and it looked like it is under the panel "Panel1".

So what is the method or syntax in Vb.Net that makes "Form2" which is the MDIChild of "Form1" to appear on top of all controls that are added to the parent form "Form1" and not under them?

Please advise...

Thanks in advance....

Posted 8-Feb-12 1:36am

dgthecodeproject

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Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 8-Feb-12 11:38am

Why are you trying to torture yourself with this?
--SA

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Dave Kreskowiak · Answer 1 · 2012-02-08T02:35:00

The MdiChild form IS showing. The problem is you covered up the entire MdiClient control on the MdiParent form with a Panel Docked to the entire form.

Remove the Panel control. I have no idea why you put it there.

The MdiClient control that is automatically put on a MdiParent form is already Docked Full in the form. You would have to search the Controls collection of Form1 to find the MdiClient control, then manipulate it to whatever condition you need, whatever that is. You could even call it's BringToFront method, but then that would cover up all the controls you dropped on Form1, including your panel, so what's the point??

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov · Answer 2 · 2012-02-08T05:36:00

From your question and the answer by Dave I can see that you are abusing MDI. But this is not your fault, this is a fault of MDI designers: this is MDI that abuses the reasonable sense of the UI. That's why MDI is highly discouraged, even by Microsoft. Microsoft tries hard to get rid of it. MDI is not reproduced in WPF, for example.

The advice is simple: don't use MDI, don't make your life harder and don't chase off your customer with all that ugliness. There are much better and easier ways.

Please see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_document_interface#Disadvantages[^],
Question on using MDI windows in WPF[^],
MDIContainer giving error[^],
How to Create MDI Parent Window in WPF?[^],
How to set child forms maximized, last childform minimized[^].

—SA

dgthecodeproject · Answer 3 · 2012-02-08T19:11:00

Greetings,

Thanks guys for your replies.

I just want to clarify my point behind the addition of a panel to the MDIParent form...

I need to have some controls on the MDIParent form (i.e. buttons, pictureboxes), and I also need to load a MDiChild forms (login form, client form) while the user is navigating through the application. So when a user clicks on a button, a child form should be opened on the top level (top most) and not behind those buttons or pictureboxes.

So I added the panel and add the controls to it and so I can make it visible or no depends on the loading of any childform.....

But I think that this design is not pretty mature, and so I`m seeking for a better solution or workaround since what I really need is to have the child form loaded and the controls in the mdiparent form still visible but behind the child form and not vice versa...

Please execuse me if my english is not very understandable...

Please advise...

How to make the MDIChild form appears if there is a control on the MDIParent form in VB.Net?

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