Interesting Problem...

Ben

Hi, Here goes. On a form, the Form.IsMdiChild method is read-only. Is there anyway that I can overload this so that I can set this value as well as read it (i.e. set it to TRUE without having to add it to an MDI Parent form)?? (sorry for any improper terminology). This seems pretty difficult for a beginner like me, but maybe someone here would be up to the challenge of solving this?? As always, I really am grateful and appreciate all of your time and help.

4 Replies

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yam122y ago
I thought that was an interesting problem to create a bridge to house forms in a user control. It turned out all you had to do was to add an extra form to serve as the MdiContainer, like this... do this in the user control client = new MdiClient(); this.Controls.Add(client); this.targetForm = new Form1(); this.fakeContainer = new Form1(); fakeContainer.IsMdiContainer = true; targetForm.MdiParent = fakeContainer; client.Controls.Add(targetForm); targetForm.Show();
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Ben22y ago
Again, I am trying to defy reason. I have created a user control, on which I have place an MDI Client control. Now, I want to open new Forms inside of the Client. Here is my problem: childForm myChild = new childForm(); //Creating a form to be added to the MdiClient mdi1.m.Controls.Add(myChild); //mdi1 is the user control, m is the publically accessible MDI Client myChild.Show(); //Shows the form The error occurs here: mdi1.m.Controls.Add(myChild); this is the error: An unhandled exception of type 'System.ArgumentException' occurred in system.windows.forms.dll Additional information: Can only add MDI child forms to an MdiClient. The only way I can currently get around this is to make my main form an MDI Parent, and add this code before adding the form to the user control: myChild.MdiParent = this; Then, when I try to add the form to the user control, it works beautifully. I can only assume that this is because the Form.IsMdiChild property is set to TRUE. But, I need to do this without first adding it to an MDI Parent (making my main form an MDI Parent.) So my question is: 1) Is there a way to write to the Form.IsMdiChild value? or 2) Is there another way to do this? Hopefully, this problem will interest somebody. Thanks.
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sjones22y ago
You can't set the Base form's property, but you can create one of you own for this form like this: private bool mIsMdiChild=false; public new bool IsMdiChild { get { return mIsMdiChild; } set { mIsMdiChild=value; } } But what are you expecting a MDI Child to do if it does not have a Parent? The only good reasong to create MDI apps is to contain child forms within a parent's window and to share a parent window's menu. If you don't have a parent, you can't to either of these things. This property I created above will give you something to read and write if that's all you want to do, but I really can't think of any reason you would want to.
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bram 022y ago
Why would you want to do that?! I could see why you want MDI functionality but MDI [i]implies[/i] there is a parent form. MDI forms always are part of a parent form somehow so maybe you are trying to use a MDI form for the wrong reasons.
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