BinaryPopupWindowManager .NET Description:

BinaryPopupWindowManager .NET Ver. 1.0 is a .NET component, which provides a simple to use mechanism to help retain parent Windows Form titlebar's active status when using a Windows Form as a drop-down from a control.


We have always had the need for displaying drop-down windows (usually Form objects) from a control while that control is being hosted in another Form object.


A typical example of the above scenario is when you write a custom control and that control needs to drop-down a Form window to display additional contents.


But the issue here is that the custom control itself is being hosted in a parent Form object and hence when the control drops-down its popup (Form) window, the parent Form windowÂ#s title bar would become inactive (because of focus loss), consequently resulting in pretty ugly user-interface issues.


A general trick used by many control authors to circumvent the above parent Form title bar focus issue, is to design and write the drop-down popup as a .NET Control or UserControl class and specially manage its focus aspects in order to retain the title bar focus of the parent Form window as well.


Although this trick is good enough and does the job, it would be ideal for developers to actually use the Windows Form object to design their drop-down popup windows, so as to use the extensive feature set that comes with Windows Form objects, rather than to be stuck with designing the drop-down popup objects as Controls or UserControls.


In order to use Windows Form objects as drop-down objects and at the same time keep the hosting Form WindowÂ#s title bar active, a developer will need to write a good amount of complex and tricky code to create helper objects.


Now the good news - We have done all the hard work for you and have produced a Popup Window manager object which will act as the helper object for your drop-down (popup) Form objects, which will ensure that your drop-down (popup) Form object is displayed as it is designed to be displayed, and at the same time ensure that the parent hosting FormÂ#s title bar retains its active status.


Refer to Image 1 and 2 (as below) to see the effect of applying the helper object to display your popup windows.


All you need to do is to replace the Windows.Form's ShowDialog or Show method in your code with a simple to use method from the component. That is all! Now your drop-down Form Window will display without the parent window's Title bar losing its active state.