Form Concepts

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Contents 1 Overview 2 Availability 3 Different implementations of forms 4 Other concepts 5 Samples of use 6 Tips and tricks 7 Case studies 8 Limitations and workarounds 9 See Also 10 References 10.1 Articles 10.2 Videos 10.3 Code samples 10.4 Forum discussions 10.5 Other references

Overview

Forms are the building block for all Visual WebGui applications.There are various ways to use forms within a Visual WebGui application and there are also many that utiize UserControls instead of forms.

Availability

Contents of this article applies to all versions of VisualWebGui

Different implementations of forms

• MainForm
• Dialog forms
• Link.Open
• MDI forms
• UserControls instead of child forms - simulating IFRAMEs

Other concepts

• Bookmarks

Samples of use

• Transfering context to a new form

• Showing a dialog form
  

• Retrieving response from a MessageBox
  

• Returning responses from dialog forms

• Storing and retrieving values from dialog forms
• Storing and retrieving new values from dialog forms

• Simple MDI form implementation

• Simple UserControl on Tabs

• Simulating IFRAMEs
• Detecting Browser close
  
• Preventing form close for non-mainform forms
• Preventing Browser mainform close if page dirty

Tips and tricks

• Displaying Windows Forms MessageBox or VB.NET's MsgBox will not get you anywhere

• Visual WebGUi application will not wait for input from dialog forms - See Dialog forms only modal on client - major difference from Windows Forms and Samples of use
  
• Getting a reference to your MainForm from anywhere - Use VWGContext.Current.MainForm.
  

Case studies

Limitations and workarounds

• Closing an MDI parent form does not fire Closed event of it's MDI Child forms. Problem in 6.3.x and older versions. Reported here.
• Blank screen redirecting between Silverlight and DHTML with Context.Redirect. Reported issue and Forum thread.

See Also

• Culture settings

References

Articles

Videos

• Simulating IFRAMEs in Visual WebGui
• How to return parameters from dialogs
• How to use the MessageBox class

Code samples

• Switching between forms using Context.Redirect

Forum discussions

• Wrapper class sample for getting to your MainForm, Paths, URL and more
• Getting to your foremost form or more precisely the last active form before current
• Simulating a DialogForm's modal functionality without using a dialog form
• Opening a new form by making the client-side request it but initiate the request from server-side

Other references