General Windows forms design question

[craigster]

Hi, am new to this forum and have a general design question. Am creating a windows app using VB.Net and need to create an interface for a Shipment (company exports stuff). A shipment has lots of data which in legacy system is arranged in tabs (eg General, port rotation, loading details, weight/volume, costs etc) - however within each tab there are subtabs for the main tab you're in to split it up even more e.g. if in loading details main tab, this is split between forecast loading and actual loading which uses tabs at the bottom of the form.
I think this is a really busy and confusing interface and would like to refine it - has anyone ideas of how to do this based on similar experience?

I still like the tab control but its currently overdone so maybe combining this with another control? Any thoughts are welcome.
Thanks

 

[jmcilhinney]

Nested TabControls is a UI no-no. If your shipments have that much data then it can be tricky though. You may find that it's a good idea to break some of this up into different windows and/or open dialogues for some of it rather than have everything in the same window. Also, you can have the same nested tab structure without actually having a TabControl inside a TabControl. On each tab you could have a column of buttons or icons on the left-hand side that each display an entire panle in the rest of the tab page. This is much less ugly than a TabControl nested inside a TabControl. More than that I couldn't really say without knowing more about the app spec.