Conceptual Question about Multiple Gui's in one app

[furiousferret]

The application I am writing has several different interfaces that the user can go to with the press of a button. Now, currently, the user selects a screen with the press of a button, and rest are hidden (see below)

[SIZE=2]ifaceScreen.Visible = [/SIZE][SIZE=2][COLOR=#0000ff]False
[/COLOR][/SIZE][SIZE=2]buttonSet1.Visible = [/SIZE][SIZE=2][COLOR=#0000ff]False[/COLOR][/SIZE]
[SIZE=2][COLOR=#0000ff]buttonSet2.Visible = False
[/COLOR][/SIZE][SIZE=2]AxWebBrowser1.Visible = [/SIZE][SIZE=2][COLOR=#0000ff]False[/COLOR][/SIZE]
[SIZE=2][COLOR=#0000ff]AxWebBrowser2.Visible = False
[/COLOR][/SIZE][SIZE=2]DataGrid1.Visible = [/SIZE][SIZE=2][COLOR=#0000ff]True[/COLOR][/SIZE]
[COLOR=#0000ff]

[/COLOR]


My question is a 2 part one:

Is this the most efficient / clean way to work with multiple interfaces?

and

If I have a config setting where the user can add and remove certain screens, is it better to just create them when the config file is read or to just keep the screens hidden?

 

[shroomy]

Im not positive I understand what you are trying to do, but....

I think you want a user to have two different views/layouts of the same data? Or make some sort of decision about the user and what to show on the screen?

and the answer greatly depends on your version of .net and if you are talking about a web app or a winform.

If you are using .net 2005 you may want to look at the User Profiles and Personalization classes that give you some amazing flexablility and are pretty easy to use.

and look at the roles stuff is you have different types of users.

 

[shroomy]

Oh yeah.....

if you stick with your current approach, I would at the minimum try to group things in a container (panel, div etc) so you could just show the group of stuff you want more easily by setting the container to visible/not visible

 

[furiousferret]

Thanks for the reply.

I'm using Winforms. I'm not trying to present the data in different forms, however this is a client which will view web forms, active x pages, view text via a textbox, and also will view dataset information. All this will be done within the same box (gui area) so will change with the press of a button.

I'm currently using vb.net 2003, though considering porting to 05.

 

[shroomy]

Could you just use a tab control??