Mike,

Two questions regarding two unrelated requirements:

– I have a column with icons displayed representing some underlying values. I would like a tooltip on the icon to say what it means (eg: red dot – status trouble, green dot- status fine, etc) What is the best approach to do this? Is there a way to tell the tooltipmanager that I want tooltip for a complete grid column and tell it what the various tooltips are for each underlying values of icon?

– Unrelated to the above question, I have another requirement to show tooltip for each cell but with a delay. I found from previous posts that it is possible to set tooltip on individual cells using the tooltip property but it shows without delay. For getting the delay, based on your suggestion, I would need to use the ToolTipManager

    a) what control would I associate the tooltipmanager with

    b)  To set the tooltip value, I have to trap the mouse enter event, find the underlying cell and set the tooltip value?

 

 Thanks!

 Mike, using the MouseEnterElement and MouseLeaveElement approach, can one introduce a tool tip delay i.e. it takes some time before the tool tip shows? Would one just sleep for a few millisecond and then cause the tooltip to show?

– Once the user has closed a docked pane by clicking on the "x", how can I bring it back programmatically? I read somewhere that I have do a Show() on the pane. In my current design, I am dropping controls directly onto the form. How do I determine the pane I need to Show()?  

– When  the pane is restored programmatically, would it recover the last docking when it was closed?

– Related to the first question, to find out which panes are not visible i.e. ones which are closed using the "x". I am guessing I need to iterate over some collection and check some property. I would like to know what that collection and property is.

Thanks!

Thank for the help so far Mike. Your suggestions as well the Docking Demo you suggested helped me get a whole lot further.

– Currently I have this simple code in my play app that generates a new control at runtime and TRIES to dock it as part of a existing tab group of right-docked controls. Instead of that becoming part of the tabgroup, the userControl3 just becomes a new panel docked right but sitting side-by-side to that tab group. How do I make it part of that tab group of right-docked controls?

UserControl1 userControl3 = new UserControl1();

ultraDockManager1.DockControls(

new Control[1] { userControl3 }, Infragistics.Win.UltraWinDock.DockedLocation.DockedRight, Infragistics.Win.UltraWinDock.ChildPaneStyle.TabGroup);

– I see code snippet on the forum where docking is done to a named dockarea i.e. referencing DockArea by its key. It seems like a great way to logically group controls but I do not know how to use it.

[quote user="[Infragistics] Mike Dour"]The dock manager would be able to do this if the controls were somewhere on the Form when the LoadFrom… method was called. When you load a layout file, the dock manager will initialize a DockableControlPane with the settings it was saved with. [/quote]

Mike, From what you are saying it seem the key is to make application know which controls were open when it last closed. That way, if the application instantiate those controls at LoadForm time, the dockmanage would do the needful to put it on the correct pane. Do you agree with conclusion?

 Second question, my entire application is developed as a user control. The dock manager is on the user control instead of the form. So what you said about "LoadForm" is applicable if the dockmanager is on the Form. What is event that I should be concerned about when dock manager is on the user control?

 Thanks!

[quote user="[Infragistics] Mike Dour"]The UltraDockManager has SaveAs… and LoadFrom… method which allow you to save and load layout files. This will do exactly what you ask in your first question. You would typically want to save the layout file in the FormClosed event and load it if it exists at the end of the constructor or in the Load event of the Form. The Docking Demo sample uses the layout files, but in a slightly different way. It allows you to save and load layout files from a menu. It also saves the layout when the program loads and allows the user to reset the layout by loading in the originally saved layout.[/quote] 

Thanks Mike! When you say "Docking Demo", is that on the Infragistics sample code installed with the toolkit or something on the website? If latter, can you provide link?

[quote user="[Infragistics] Mike Dour"]I haven't tried using it with loading layout files yet, but there is an InitializePane event which you could use to only load a control once the pane is first shown.[/quote]

The requirement involves having to show a new panel for each user action and fill it with a user control. So, for say 15 user actions, I will need 15 different user controls. I have two choices

1. Design 15 different panels and fill the control at InitializePanel time.

2. Dynamically generate the panels and then fill it with the controls

The advantage to the second approach is its scalability. If the application later needs to support 5  new user controls , none of the layout code needs to change.

 Do you think I can achieve #2 and still save the layout? So, one user may open User Control 1(UC1), UC10 and UC11 in three dynamically generated panels. While in another scenario it was UC2, UC4 in two dynamically generated panels. Since these controls are coming up in dynamically generated panel, what would the DockManager save for the two users? Would it know how many panels to be generated at initialization, where to dock those and which controls are to be placed on those panels?

Thanks!