This is a good thread.  This may be slightly off topic but I wasn't sure where to post this question. 

I have a main MDI form with the following method that is used to launch a child form.

The child form has a control which needs to open a new child form in the main MDI form.  Any ideas about how to accomplish this?

Thanks for looking!

I think that the best thing to do would be to expose the MDI client...or....if your main form just has the MDIContainer property set you can reference it directly.  When the form is launched it will have a reference to the parent form in the ParentForm property which you can type and reference.  You may need to make your LauncForm method public or Friend so it can be accessed though.

If you are using an MDIClient control and manually adding it to the form, then you can just expose it through a public property and basically do the same thing:

Thanks Trent.  This works perfectly!

Glad it worked for you

Hi guys,

A couple of questions.... I am using a picture that you used earlier in the post... how did you create that MDI with that control panel on the left?

am i correct in assuming that if the user were to click or double click on the name of a form in the list in the control panel it would show that form?

and second, using the code you provided earlier in this post... how would I create navigation buttons to utilize this code... lets say that I wanted navigation buttons in the MDI to be able to navigate through all the child forms... yknow the basics... first, previous, next, last.

This is a really cool concept! I'm eager to implement it.

Well, basically this is just a docked Panel on the main form which we custom render and then add the logic we need for MDI Window Activation.  One thing that you can do is create an MDIClient class and then add that class as a control to the main form rather than setting the MdiContainer property....it just gives you more flexibility.

This entire explanation would be more of a tutorial rather than a quick post here...and in fact, this is one of the very things that we cover during class.  I know you guys haven't had a chance to make it to class in the past, but if it were at all possible, I think that you guys would gain a lot of first hand experience on items just like this if you were able to make it to the next class  

Ivan,

Your main form looks really good. I too was first thinking of a toolstrip dropdown that would show the open windows.  Now i have decided to use a panel like yours and the one from Practice Studio, so i can use it to show some more info. I do however have issues with this (read - it doesn't look the way i want it)

Can you describe how you did your panel and lists?

TIA.

/Teddy

Really all you need to do is set the MdiParent property on the parent form to False.  Drop a FlowLayoutPanel (or ThemedPanel) on the form and dock it left.  Next, in your main form, define an MdiClient class (it is a control) as a private and manually add it to the form.  This MdiClient will be where all of there client forms will appear, but the panels docking will be left intact.

Hi Trent,

Thanks - i got it now. My problem was that i set the text of an employee form to the name of the employee after it is loaded from a browsedialog. So i wanted the new text of the form to be renamed/refreshed in the list.

The rest was just cosmetic customations of the properties.

/Teddy

Hi Teddy.

I'm glad Trent could help you, he got all this from me... oh, wait, I think the orther of the words are not set properly...