Question How to manage several forms

[ashley.s]

Dear All,
Hope you are doing fine. I am a beginner to vb. So I am doing so many efforts to write some programs myself. The first thing that I have found difficult to manage is when a program has several forms. Basically what I do is just hiding one and showing up the other form. it does not look that nice. I was thinking of having one form and laying all the other forms on that one. Let me explain myself more thoroughly. Let's say to the left hand side of my form, i have few group boxes with buttons. So when clicking a button, it should automatically close the form and show up the new one on the main form. Its like refreshing the form. So what I mean is that there is only one main form and clicking each button will show another form. Hope I am explaining myself correctly.
I have tried MDI but that's not I am looking for. Some friends have told me to use user controls. Is that the correct path to follow?
I really need your advice.
Thanks,
Ashley

 

[mkovacs13]

So your looking to have all your sub forms nested in a single form? Every think about doing tabs, it's especially easy, and you can still utilize back and forward control buttons or the tabs themselves.


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[Herman]

If you insist on keeping with the buttons, you can simply reuse the same form and hide and show groupboxes. After all the Tabs control is just that, multiple groupboxes with each a button (the tab selector). But yeah tabs are the way to go.

 

[rakhalji]

Wat i prefer is Panel, to open multiple nos of forms in single window, You can Keep all buttons in left of form and can hv panel in right to open all other forms. i think u got little idea of that if not reply me i will help u...