Where is the Tab Order Assignment dialog in Visual Studio 2012? - winforms

For as long as I can recall, Visual Studio has had an integrate dialog that allows you to easily organize the tab order of your controls.
I've just created my first VS 2012 WinForms project, added all of my controls and went to find the Tab Indexing dialog, and it appears to be missing from Visual Studio.
I found this MSDN article which states that I can open this dialog by going to FORMAT>Tab order. The problem is that there is no Tab Order option on my FORMAT menu. Alternatively, the documentation states th at Ctrl+D should open this dialog. It doesn't.
Another alternative is to select the VIEW>Tab Order menu option. This method causes Tab Index boxes to hover over your controls. You can subsequently click on your controls, one at a time, in the order in which you want them to tab, to set the tab order.
This isn't acceptable because my form contains numerous panels and group boxes that cover one another. It is impossible for me to click-through my controls because many of them are no longer visible in the designer.
Is there an easy way for me to setup the tab order of my controls like there previously use to be within older versions of Visual Studio?

It is still available, you just need to add it back to the View menu. Tools + Customize, Commands tab, Menu bar = View. Select the menu item in Controls where you want to insert it, say the bottom one. Then Add Command, Category = View, Commands = Tab Order.
Your memory of this command does sound a bit hazy, it was never on the Format menu and its never been a dialog. If you want to put it on the Format menu then you can, just pick the Format menu bar in the Commands tab. You can't make it a dialog though, it numbers the controls in the designer view. Some odds that you actually remembered the View + Document Outline command.

Go to your alignment toolbar. At the end, click the tiny little "Add or Remove Buttons" down arrow. Click the "Add or Remove Buttons" button, and look towards the bottom of the list. You should see Tab Order. Click on that and it will be added to the alignment toolbar.

I found this to be very useful http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/csz6b8x8.aspx
It allows you to simply click on the various controls in the order that you want them to tab through. You do this while you are in the "Show tab order" mode as described above; the tip from Elton about adding the icon to a toolbar makes it easy to toggle the mode.
Ctrl-doubleclick the first control, then click subsequent controls, and press Enter to terminate. You can also start on the Nth control if you Ctrl-click the one before it, then click in order as normal.
(VS Express 2013)

The Tab order tool from the view menu disappears in some cases. For example, if you clikc a text box, then go to its properties, the tab order option will not show. You must select a control, then immediately go to the view menu and choose tab order.

You can click through your controls with the Document Outline view. If they all have the same TabIndex value, their Z-order will be used as tab order. The Z-order can be changed also with the Document Outline view.

Related

showing large data in small area

I have a CRM application(winform application),which fetches customer info from db and shows it in a small area using scroll option.But new requirement has come that it will show 65 fields instead of 45 (that was shown earlier) that too in a category wise.Here real problem is i have to show all the data at at a time without scrolling in that small area.
I tried to use pop up but that way Agent cant input data in main form while looking at the pop up box.
So friends do you have any better idea how to achieve this without using any third party controls.
Thanx in advance
You can group the fields in different tabs.
From MS documentation:
To add a tab in the designer
Drag a TabControl from the Windows Forms tab of the Toolbox to the designer.
In the Properties window, click the Add Tab link.
- or -
In the Properties window, click the Ellipsis button (Aa984280.vbellipsesbutton(en-us,VS.71).gif) next to the TabPages property to open the TabPage Collection Editor. Click the Add button.
This way you'll have more space to show the fields, but still using the same area.

What Determines Which Item Is on Top in Visual Studio

So I have a form with a tabcontrol that takes up the entire view. I have 3 buttons that I have managed to get to be on top of this tabcontrol at all times. I have a 4th button that is always underneath the tab control. How do I get always on top like the others?
The order that controls, in the same container, appear (both visually and interactively) is determined by their "z-order". The term z-order is referring to the 3rd dimension, depth which is often referred to as the z axis.
In WinForms, the z-order is determined by the order in which controls are added to a ControlsCollection (i.e. Control.Controls).
You can see the z-order of controls (as well as container grouping) by opening up the "Document Outline view" when viewing you Form's designer view. This lists every control and every container. They are indented by their container and the z-order is the order they appear in. You can use the up and down buttons to move the selected item up or down in z-order.
Try right mouse clicking the TabControl (not the TabPage) and from the menu, select Send to Back

Expression blend 4, go back to window after editing DataTemplate?

If I have a Xaml Window open, I can goto Resources in the right panel, and see all my DataTemplates. If I right click on one of them, I can select a data template, click edit, then graphically edit my template.
Now that is nice, but, how do I go back to the Window containing the DataTemplate? If I right-click the window in the right hand panel, I can select "view xaml", but there is no option or menu I can find that returns me to the main Window for graphical editing. Where is it?!?
Anyone know how to return?
It's somewhere in the bar above the design view if i remember correctly, it's a path in the hierarchy which you can go up.
Also in the Objects and Timeline toolbar there's an up arrow which brings you back.
(Where it says DataTemplate1 (ContentPresenter Template))

Microsoft WPF Ribbon - Group buttons as drop down buttons

I have implemented the Microsoft WPF Ribbon in a WPF browser .NET application.
It is a pretty simply layout with tabs, groups and buttons in the groups. There are however a LOT of groups and buttons and users are having a tough time using the Ribbon on smaller displays. Some of the groups convert the buttons to small image buttons with no text which the users don't like. They have to hover over each button to see it's purpose.
Other groups collapse completely and change to drop down buttons. This they want as standard. Each group to be represented as a drop down button by default and when clicking on it a list of the items as menu items.
To get an idea of what I am after, you can simply reduce the window size until the groups collapse to this drop down effect with menu items.
Can someone help?
The buttons are bound to the ribbon dynamically as are the tabs and groups.
Is there a reason the RibbonMenuButton doesn't suffice?
<r:RibbonMenuButton
Label="Clicking"
SmallImageSource=".."
LargeImageSource="..">
<r:RibbonMenuItem
Header="Click Me 1"
ImageSource=".."/>
<r:RibbonMenuItem
Header="Click Me 2"
ImageSource=".."/>
<r:RibbonMenuItem
Header="Click Me 3"
ImageSource=".."/>
<r:RibbonMenuItem
Header="Click Me 4"
ImageSource=".."/>
</r:RibbonMenuButton>
I think your problem might not be technical, but rather conceptual.
If you take a look at Microsoft's guidelines on ribbons, you'll notice that ribbons are not necessarily the best choice if you have too many commands:
Is there a large number of commands? Would using a ribbon require more than seven core tabs? Would users constantly have to change tabs to perform common tasks? If so, using toolbars (which don't require changing tabs) and palette windows (which may require changing tabs, but there can be several open at a time) might be a more efficient choice.
Maybe you should consider splitting your command groups on several tabs, grouping them logically so that actions that take place together often remain together, while actions that seldom take place together are on separate tabs. For example, changing page size and margins would remain together, while changing font size would go on a separate tab.
You can also consider using contextual tabs that will only appear under certain conditions, and therefore will only show commands related to what the user is doing at the moment.
You can control which buttons are displayed in a RibbonBar when they have been resized (internally by the bar). You can use the RibbonGroup.GroupSizeDefinitions and RibbonTab.GroupSizeReductionOrder properties to define how each RibbonGroup should be displayed. See this Ribbon Layout and Resizing page on MSDN for more information.

Set dropdown direction in WinForms

By default, a winforms dropdown always extends to the right from the dropdown button / menu item. However, I have a toolbox button (similiar to chrome's options button) which is on the far-right side of the window; when clicked, the default menu would always extend outside of the window.
Are there any built-in ways to make the menu drop left from the dropdown button, or do I have to set the menu's position by hand, and manually show/hide?
Edit: there are 2 situations, where such behaviour is less than optimal:
if it's not full-screen, or close to the right end, it will hang out from the app's window; and
In a multi-monitor enviornment, it drops down on the next monitor
Take a look at this:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.toolstripdropdowndirection.aspx
Assuming you're using .NET and ToolStripMenuItems, there is a DropdownDirection property that you can set to one of these enums.
IIRC, it actually checks the size of the screen (not the window) and will drop the to the left to avoid going off of the screen. Would that be good enough?

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