VB.NET - Form Placement

Question

Hello everybody,

I am making a program in vb.net (visual basic) that has two forms. I have one as a sort of "main" base which will be behind everything. Then I have another additional form which is suppose to go on top of the "main" form. Well I get this to work when I show both of the forms, but I want the smaller (additional) form to be centered onto the main form. If you want an easier sense of it, its a small box in a big box. (all centered and aligned). Does anyone know how to do this?

Thanks

Answer 1

FormStartPosition.CenterParent -- a .NET enumeration described here : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.formstartposition.aspx

Answer 2

It sounds like you're looking for a MDI interface for your form presentation. If so, then could you try using:

childForm.StartPosition = FormStartPosition.CenterParent;

This will centre it on the screen. If not, you might want to try centering it explicitly as shown here

Answer 3

I'm assuming that the main form creates the child form.

When main form (A) creates small form (B), it should give B a reference to itself (which is to say that B should accept a constructor parameter of type Form, called something like backgroundForm, and pass A).

Now B can set its position in the OnLoad event as follows:
x-coord: the x position of A plus 1/2 the width of A minus 1/2 the width of B
y-coord: the y position of A plus 1/2 the height of A minus 1/2 the height of B

Furthermore, B can subscribe to events in A, such as when the window is moved or resized.