Question MDI vs SDI

[chilekitty]

Hi,

I’m new to vb.net and am developing in VS 2008. In the past, I’ve developed in both MDI and SDI environments with VB6. I know it depends on what you want your application to do but since .net is a whole new beast, I was wondering (after some research) if there is a ‘proper’ or ‘better’ way to develop in VB.net these days when it comes to MDI or SDI environments (or both??)? I see all kinds of opinions and comments but we definitely want to go with what will be the better way in .net.

A bit of what we’d like it to do:
- have a common tool/menu bar
- open multiple windows and have control over the open windows
- be able to ‘undocked’ or open a window (SDI?) from the parent that is ‘floatable’ but retains the common tool/menu bar

I’ve read up on some ways to develop in SDI to make it seem MDI (using inheritance, global collection, etc…). And I have found some samples for doing what is needed in MDI but they were in C++ (can it also be done in vb.net ??).

Please let me know if more information is needed. Thanks in advance for any advise or info.........

 

[JuggaloBrotha]

You can do MDI apps in .Net far easier than you could in vb6. Btw MDI (Multiple Document Interface) and SDI (Single Document Interface) has nothing to do with any specific language.

It sounds like you're looking to develop an MDI application that has the ability to dock some of the windows to the sides of the parent and whatnot. Here's one explanation: Docking windows in MDI : dock, mdi, window

 

[chilekitty]

Thanks for your quick reply.....I understand that the language has nothing to do with it. We are changing quite a few things since our VB6 development days which includes whether we want a MDI or SDI interface for any future .net applications. From some of our research, MDI is 'so yesterday' and we don't want to build on something that seemingly is out of touch. I was hoping to see what other's thought or knew in this forum so we can make an informative decision on how to proceed in our current and future development. And thanks for the link; any info is sure to help.....

 

[JuggaloBrotha]

MDI apps will never go away and I'm not sure how they could be considered "yesterday", even the most complex database management systems out there are MDI apps, even VS 2002/2003/2005/2008 are all MDI app's, out of curiosity where did you hear that MDI is "yesterday" ?

 

[chilekitty]

Thanks for the info. Let me go over my notes and I'll send you where the posts were. Actually, there were a few out there; send the most pertinent ones if you'd like.