Hi All
I have an mdi form with serveral mdi child forms.
How can I set one mdi child form so that it always
stay on top ?

Thanks
Rony



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For what possible reason would you want to do that? That's completely
against what MDI is for.

on Sun, 7 Jun 2009 17:44:13 -0400 bearing the following
fruit:

Posibly for a side bar type menu thing. Either way, the OP
is going the wrong way about it.

Why would you want to do that? As MikeD stated it is against what MDI is
for. But if you really want to do the absurd you will need to basically get
a timer to bring that form to focus constantly...

Show quoteHide quote

How about you add a Picutrebox to one edge of the MDI parent
and put your controls on that?

LFS

You can't. You need to use something other than an MDI child for this.

Going against what all the other replies say, I also have a use for this
from time to time.  Our application basically hosts all forms within an MDI
container.  Most forms are general input entry forms and grids etc, but I
occasionally want a window to stay on top of all the others that are open.
E.g. When I have a booking form open I want another small window open with
the basic clients details visible for various purposes.  It's a small Fixed
ToolWindow form in the bottom right.  I think something like this a great
use.  It may not be a MDI child in the normal sense, but might be the kind
of thing you were referring to.


Firstly make sure the MDIChild is set to False

In the declarations at the top of the form...

    Private Declare Function SetParent Lib "user32" (ByVal hWndChild As
Long, ByVal hWndNewParent As Long) As Long
    Private Declare Function SetForegroundWindow Lib "user32" (ByVal hwnd As
Long) As Long

In form load set the following...

    SetParent Me.hwnd, frmMain.hwnd
    SetForegroundWindow Me.hwnd

frmMain should be set to the name of the MDI parent.  Even though the form
is set to an MDIChild it will still stay within the bounds of the MDI parent
with the above code.

Hope this helps.

Chris




Show quoteHide quote

There's no "even though" about it. That's the NORMAL behavior of an MDI
child.

I actually meant to say "Even though the forms MDIChild is set to False it
will stay in the bounds of the MDI parent".

The API call makes the form stay within the MDI window even though MDIChild
is set to False.

I don't want to argue about whether you should allow "always on top" with
MDI Children.  I was just trying to help someone out who might have a
similar need for it as me.  For my application it works perfectly.  Having
an MDI parent to host all forms works great.

One example of where others have used this is in VB6 itself.  If you run VB6
in MDI mode... if you undock the Immediate window as you drag it around it
always stays on top of the code windows.  Perfect use of it!

Chris


Show quoteHide quote

Show quote Hide quote But the Immediate window is not an MDI child, and it CAN be dragged outside
of the MDI parent. That's the point I was trying to make: if you want this
functionality you must not use an MDI child (the definition under VB being
"a form with the MDIChild property set to True"). Plus I think limiting the
movement of such a form to the parent is just silly. Has anyone ever used a
program that did this? What was the justification?

Hi Chris, thanks for your post, I need this kind of behavior in my
application too. I tried to put the code exactly as you mentionned and I
get errors.

Public Class test
    Private Declare Function SetParent Lib "user32" (ByVal hWndChild As
Long, ByVal hWndNewParent As Long) As Long
    Private Declare Function SetForegroundWindow Lib "user32" (ByVal
hwnd As Long) As Long

    Private Sub test_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As
System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load

        Try
            SetParent(Me.hwnd, Magentis.hwnd)
            SetForegroundWindow(hwnd)
        Catch ex As Exception

        End Try
    End Sub
End Class

This is what I did and the error is : 'hwnd' is not declared.

Any ideas what I did wrong?

Thanks
Marc-Andre

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Hi Marc-Andre,

I assume from your code you are trying this in VB.NET?  I've never tried it
in there before.  My example was for VB6 and I would not know if this is
possible in .NET.

Thanks,
Chris



Show quoteHide quote

[Canned response]

This is a VB "classic" newsgroup. Questions about VB.NET (including VB
2005/2008 and VB Express, which have dropped .NET from their names) are
off-topic here.

Please ask .NET questions in newsgroups with "dotnet" in their names. The
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For questions specific to the VB.NET language, use this group:

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Please note that things like controls and data access, which have their own
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you should look for groups like these:

microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.windowsforms.controls
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(Note that "vb" is not present in the group name.)

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