Electronic Designer Resources

Copy the .h, .cpp and .resx files into the project directory.
Right click the project name in the solution explorer and use ‘Add Existing Item’ to add them to the project.
Select the .h file and then in the properties change the file type from “C++ Class” to “C++ Form”

When you need to pass sender and e to the function (e.g. a form control event)

	frmMain_Load(this, gcnew EventArgs());

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Int Note: Kin Lib uses child forms

Applications that have a main window which contain one or more child windows are called Multiple Document Interface (MDI)

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Creating The Form

Project > Add New Item > Windows Form. Name it using ‘frm’ at the start (my convention)
Set the ‘Form Border Style’
Set ‘MaximiseBox’ and ‘MinimizeBox’ properties
Set StartPostion
Set ‘Text’
Set ‘icon’ (or turn off ShowIcon)

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Show and hide the cursor

Cursor->Show();
Cursor->Hide();

You can assign the same event to multiple controls. When called the “object sender” portion will be a reference to whatever one of the controls was clicked.
The EventArgs portion is a way to pass extra information to the event handler. Some events use a derivative of EventArgs which contain extra information.

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Detecting Form Has Got Focus

Use the ‘Activated’ event

Bring Form To Front

this->BringToFront();

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Indexing Controls (refer to them by index number)

Use a group box

Stopping Refresh Of A Control

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Opening a form

#include "FormName.h"			//Add this at top of file

	frmConfiguration ^ConfigForm = gcnew frmConfiguration();
	ConfigForm->PassedValue1 = "This is a string I'm passing";

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Set the secondary form owner to the main form.  For instance, if you have created another form you do this: (more…)

To Use A Global Variable

Add it to our ap-main.h file – this is automatically included in all files (see creating a project if this file is not in your project)
You can’t make strings global – only normal variable types
However you can just pass a handle to a string or come other object so the form can read/write it. (more…)

Making Form Re-Sizable

AutoScroll

Set to true, to enable scroll bars when needed.
You can then just add controls outside of the forms size and the scroll bars will appear to allow then to be seen.

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Create a ContextMenuStrip from the toolbox

Transparency is actually simulated by drawing the pixels of the Parent, which is the form.  Therefore you only see the form pixels, stacking effects don’t work. One approach is to just draw the images in the form’s Paint event, or consider WPF which has a very different rendering model that easily supports transparency.

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Force Label To Front

MyLabel->BringToFront();