Let me try to explain scenario: I have a main view that looks like this (simplified):
<Grid>
<ContentControl Content="{Binding RegularScreen}" /> <!--used for "regular" application views -->
<ContentControl Content="{Binding DialogScreen}" /> <!-- used for dialog view -->
</Grid>
Regular screen is created first. While working on regular screen, a user triggers an action that requires a dialog screen to be shown to user. This dialog screen must cover completely the application, must not allow user to perform any other action but on this dialog. Dialog screen exists to:
allow user to choose from given options
when user selects an option, dialog screen closes, and this information is passed to regular screen.
To return to above code, when dialog screen is shown, DialogScreen is set to an instance of dialog screen. This is where the problem comes:
now we have both RegularScreen and DialogScreen contents shown (although the second one is visually overlapping the first one). Since in RegularScreen I have some InputBindings that monitor the keyboard, when I press some key while DialogScreen is shown, RegularScreen captures the key?!? This should never happen, and the only screen that should be handling the keys is DialogScreen (since it is on top of RegularScreen).
Any ideas why is this happening and any advice about what to change in design?
The reason why I have decided to have DialogScreen overlapping RegularScreen, is because RegualarScreen is quite complex screen, contains many tabs, and is very time/resource consuming to destroy it / recreate it every time a dialog screen is shown. This way I keep it "alive", and after I close the dialog screen, it shows immediately.
What you are describing is the natural effect of opening a dialog Window using window.ShowDialog. From the linked page:
ShowDialog shows the window, disables all other windows in the application, and returns only when the window is closed. This type of window is known as a modal window.
So, as you can see, this automatically disables all other windows in the application. Perhaps you should try that instead?
Related
I'm developing a GUI in Linux (Ubuntu 16.04 - WM: Gnome) using GTK+3 and the graphic library cairo.
After clicked on a push button (Plot), using the instruction of cairo I draw a red square on a new top window where I put a GtkDrawingArea.
In this window I also put a push button (Cancel) that clicked, hide the window. In this way, if I re-push "Plot", the red square reappear.
The issue is the "x" icon present in the top bar of the window.
If (no me) a user push this x, the window disapper and if he re-push the "Plot" an error is reported.
The question is: it is possible avoid this possible cause of error?
(remove this "x" from the top bar of the window or in some way disable its functionality).
I tryed to find alone a solution and the possibility found are:
1 - Remove from the window the property of "decorated".
The top bar disapper (so also the x) but is not possible move the window on the screen
2 - Using the function gtk_window_set_deletable(window, FALSE) (used before to show the window), but the x is always there and pushing it the window is destroyed.
If you think that can be useful, I can report the code.
I'm waiting your suggestion.
Edit:
Now we know what you want to achieve: display a separate window but avoid destroying it so you can display it again. You already have in the "Cancel" button of your secondary window the logic to hide it.
The cleanest solution is to just do the same: when the user tries to close the secondary window, hide it instead. This way the user is not frustrated of seeing something that apparently doesn't work as expected. Hidden or closed, it's different for you but it's the same for the user.
So you just need to connect to the delete-event of that secondary window, and hide it. There's even no need to create a specific callback for that, GTK+ provides it for you: you just need to connect the delete-event to gtk_widget_hide_on_delete. To display the window again, just call gtk_widget_show_all on it.
Original answer:
I realize the plot
"realize" is a term that has a defined meaning in GTK+. Don't use it out of context, and try to use an alternate term if you're not talking about widget realization.
What I would like is to remove this "x" from the top bar of the window
or in some way disable its functionality.
Do you understand this is ultra annoying for a user and defeats a unified user experience? Would you like to use applications that do random different things?
Anyway, one way of disabling the closing button is to connect to the delete-event and return TRUE there to stop the propagation of the event. The button will still be there but do nothing, so you will have to kill the app to exit it.
To make the button disappear, gtk_window_set_deletable will ask the Window Manager to do that, but we'd need some code to know what's wrong with your attempt.
I have a Page in WPF which has a text box. This text box is set to be focused on load.
There is an application running in the background which takes a string value of a biometrics scan result and places it in that text box. This is a 3rd party application, and we have been told that it looks for a text box with a certain name, in an application with a certain name and if that text box is focused on, it will write that string in.
This works perfectly fine, but below is the problem I am having.
We have another piece of software which is a custom on screen keyboard. The text box can also be written into so the user can click a button to bring up this keyboard then start typing. However when this keyboard comes up, it seems to lose focus to my application and it doesnt come back again. For the lifecycle of our application running, the biometrics doesn't work because it doesn't see my application as the one currently in focus.
How do I force my application to come back in focus, but only when I want it to. I don't want it ALWAYS to be in focus and on the top, else the custom keyboard would never show.
I looked into Application.Activated Event with no joy, and even tried the following
public static extern bool SetForegroundWindow(IntPtr hWnd);
Getting a but stuck, does anyone have any advice?
Have you tried Activate() and Focus() methods?
This thread has a bunch of answers on topic Bring a window to the front in WPF
This particular one worked for me https://stackoverflow.com/a/7559766/305020
I have a winforms MDI app where a window that is a "child" of the MDI form pops up a dialog, like this:
AddPartsForm partsForm = new AddPartsForm( );
partsForm.StartPosition = FormStartPosition.CenterParent;
DialogResult result = partsForm.ShowDialog( this );
As you can see, I have attempted both to center the dialog within its parent, and to establish who the parent is. This generally works. The dialog itself is a form with a dropdown list from which to select something that fills a grid on the same form. Occasionally, the loading of the grid takes up to ten seconds.
During the loading, I am careful not to move my mouse or click on anything. Yet, every so often (but not always) when the grid loads, the dialog "disappears" behind the form that called it. I can find it in the system tray, but I want this not to happen. There must be a parent/child or owner/child convention that most everyone uses and I have missed, because I do not see this kind of behavior in most software that I use.
Surprisingly one can show more than one dialog at a time by putting the ShowDialog() call on the Dispatcher:
uiDispatcher.BeginInvoke(new Func<bool?>(myWindow.ShowDialog));
How come this works and still the UI remains running responding to user interaction once the dialog is shown (I would have thought not since ShowDialog() blocks the thread it is on which has to be the UI thread), one can even go on showing new dialogs:
Window myWindow;
for(int i = 0; i < 5; i ++)
{
myWindow = new Window();
uiDispatcher.BeginInvoke(new Func<bool?>(myWindow.ShowDialog));
}
And the UI is still responsive.
Is there something I should beware of relying on this behaviour? (I want to show one dialog on top of another when some background thread wants to - this works - the only unwanted behaviour seems to be when switching apps sometimes WPF does not know which dialog should be on top - but still allows you to bring one of the dialogs to the front by clicking on it which is unusual for a dialog as clicking outside a dialog is usually not allowed).
UPDATE: One issue I have come across is if you hide one of your dialogs the user can interact with all other Windows again! (not just the other dialogs). See: WPF Dialog not modal?
Showing a dialog does not block the UI thread -- otherwise you won't be able to interact with the dialog.
It merely marks the fact that there is a modal dialog outstanding, and that it should disable inputs to all other non-dialog windows.
If you shuff a ShowDialog call into the dispatcher, the dispatcher will allow an additional dialog to be created because you are not doing something which is prohibited when a modal dialog is outstanding -- which is to input into other non-dialog windows.
Your new dialog is fully functional, because it is a dialog, and you are not trying to input into non-dialog windows.
Switching applications should bring any modal dialog out to the front, but since you have more than one modal dialogs, the system will get confused as to which one should be top-most. I'd suggest you trap the activation event and just manually bring the necessary dialog top-most.
I like how MsgBox stops all further processing until it's clicked but I don't like how it pops that little msgbox in the middle of the screen. Is there a way to do something like a msgbox but keep it on my Form (which is always in view) so I can go ahead and click a button on the form instead of having to bring the little msgbox window on top of windows that may be covering it.
I use the msgbox to inform me that a certain situation has happened, which I manually fix and when I'm done I click the MsgBox to continue processing. It'd be nice to have this button right on the form.
which I then have bring to the front if there is a window covering it
That shouldn't happen, but can happen if you display the message box from a thread in your program. The window has the desktop as the parent and has no Z-order relationship with the windows in your user interface. And yes, can easily disappear behind the window of another app, including your own.
There's a MessageBoxOptions option that isn't exposed in Winforms, MB_TOPMOST, which ensures the window is top-most. You'd use it like this:
MessageBox.Show("text", "caption", MessageBoxButtons.OK,
MessageBoxIcon.Information, MessageBoxDefaultButton.Button1,
(MessageBoxOptions)0x40000); // use MB_TOPMOST
But by far the best thing to do is to display the message box on your UI thread. Use Control.Invoke() to do so. That way the other windows of your app are disabled, no way for the user to not notice the box.
Still one problem with this, the user won't expect the box to show up since it is shown asynchronously from anything she does. Which means the box can easily get dismissed by accident when the user just happened to press the Enter or Space key. Or clicked at just the wrong spot. Nothing much you can do about that.
Centering the box in your main window is technically possible, but fugly to do. Check this answer.
Do you mean that the form shall exchange its contents with a message plus an OK button?
This would be similar to the way a text mode interface typically works.
You can make it happen by adding a disabled panel or UserControl with message and button topmost on the form and enable it when you wish to alert the user. However, I am puzzled how to implement the blocking behavior similar to MessageBox.Show() and Dialog.Show().