How to do two things with one click in Windows Form

Question

On my main form, there is another (floatable) window. This floatable window works sort of like a popupwindow in that it will close when the user clicks somewhere else outside of this window. This is handled by the Deactivate event. But what I want to do is, if the user clicks on a different control (say a button), I want to both close this float window and then activate that button with just one click. Currently, the user has to click twice (one to deactivate the window and once more to activate the desired button). Is there a way to do this with just one click?

Answer 1

I had a slightly hacky solution. In your Deactivate event, fire another custom event to your main form. Then when you main form is handling the custom event, enumerate through your control(this.Controls) and locate the control under the mouse by checking all their bound then call Focus(). You might need to sort by the one with the smallest surface area, or you can have a separate list of "focus-able" control like button just for this purpose.

Another way might be to switch focus to your main form immediately after OnMouseLeave of the floatable window, or OnMouseHover of your main window, but keep the floatable windows on top, just no focus. Handle the global mouse down of your main form, and close the floatable window by then.

These are just theories, not tested.

Answer 2

foreach(Control c in parentForm.Controls)
{
   c.Click += delegate(object sender, EventArgs e)
              {
                  if(floatyWindow != null && floatyWindow.IsFloating)
                  {
                       floatyWindow.Close();
                  }
              };
}

And then add your handlers as normal. This additional handler can close the floaty window. Make sure you floaty window isn't a dialog too as this will not allow your parent form's controls to be clicked.

Answer 3

I had an issue like this once too, when a customer wanted "floaty" windows all over there application. I used used an approach similar to the one described in this article:

http://www.vbaccelerator.com/home/NET/Code/Controls/Popup_Windows/Popup_Windows/article.asp

Code sample available here:

http://www.vbaccelerator.com/home/NET/Code/Controls/Popup_Windows/Popup_Windows/Popup_Form_Demonstration.asp

By extending this a bit we created "floaty" windows similar to the ones VS uses when you get a runtime error while debugging code.

At the very least reading the code may give you some insight, however, quarrelsome's response may be the more simple solution.