[RESOLVED] Prevent control flickering

[schoemr]

Hi,

I have a very large userform with many textboxes and also panels. I have notice when I scroll up and down fast the form/controls flicker.

I set form property

DoubleBuffered = True

but it is not making much of a difference, actually I can not see a difference.

How can I prevent this flickering please?

Thanks

[ChrisE]

Hi,

you have to set the DoubleBuffer to the Control

put this is a Modul named modMain

Imports System.Reflection

 Public Sub DoubleBufferedPanel(ByVal myPanel As Panel, ByVal setting As Boolean)
        Dim panType As Type = myPanel.[GetType]()
        Dim pi As PropertyInfo = panType.GetProperty("DoubleBuffered", BindingFlags.Instance Or BindingFlags.NonPublic)
        pi.SetValue(myPanel, setting, Nothing)
    End Sub

and in the Form Load

 
Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
     
        modMain.DoubleBufferedPanel(Panel1, True)

    End Sub

see if it helps

[i00]

ChrisE: I personally prefer to inherit the control that I want double buffered then use the SetStyle method...
That said ... in normal circumstances double buffering should only affect the owner drawing of the control itself - controls placed on another should not flicker when the parent control is scrolled...

Have you done anything else that may be considered "special"?

[schoemr]

Hi

Have you done anything else that may be considered "special"?

I have 114 panels and 270 textboxes on the form?

[tommytwotrain]

Hi



I have 114 panels and 270 textboxes on the form?

I suppose you know that is crazy!

Why not use this or that instead? ie DataGridView etc.

Does the user actually have to use that form with 270 text boxes and enter data into it that way?

Is there a reason the panels are required? You can draw a rectangle on the form around the textboxes if that is what the panels do?

But yes panels are blinky things. Add the double buffer. I normally use class that inherits too. However I must try ChrisE's way!

[schoemr]

Hi Tommy,

Yes it is a very busy form. The user have to complete a lot of information. At first I decided to abandon this idea because it was too much data to process. I ended up with a database with (I can not remember the exact figure) but I was like 400 + tables. Then KPMG show me about array's and join and split, so that reduce the columns A LOT.. After that I decide to try again....

But now the user still have to see all the fields (textboxes, labels, etc) It is required to have a view on complete form i.e. say a calculation was done and that result was captured in Section 1 of the form, then in Section 15 of the form the user must scroll up to see that value. So it is a lot of up and down scroll. It is an absolute MUST that there be only one form that user must complete.

To divide all data in multiple forms I was told NO..

The reason for all the panels is because some fields are grouped together (just visually) It was required that the sections have a border with a thick border width - compliments of my good friend JMC who help me with a custom panel class.


So I have e.g. Section 1 - it is a Panel with border width = 2

Inside the panel1 I have:

- a title (label) on top
- 40 Labels and 40 textboxes


And so on.....

[tommytwotrain]

Hi Tommy,

Yes it is a very busy form.
Inside the panel1 I have:

- a title (textbox) on top
- 40 Labels and 40 textboxes


And so on.....

I see.

Well, if the panels serve no other purpose but as a border then I think you can eliminate the panels and draw the borders on the form that will stop the blinking.

Are the panels are not for tabbing or something?

I would try to do away with them.

What is the data? I mean one can enter forty values into a single text box and it is easier than forty text boxes. ie you have a line feed each value is on a new line in a text box and that is one string.

Oh...the panels help to save and restore chunks of data?

Well, not to worry. I am sure jmc showed it for a reason.

If everything else is working then carry on I guess and see if doublebuffered panels stop the blinking.

[schoemr]

Well, not to worry. I am sure jmc showed it for a reason.

If he not chocking in his coffee to see he is my friend

[i00]

Can you post the designer code on here and I'll see what I can do?

Kris

[Shaggy Hiker]

I agree with getting rid of panels. Each control has a certain amount of overhead. For example, Paint events will tend to cascade as parents invalidate their children, and so on. Once you get past a certain number of controls, all the drawing can get kind of...costly. Flickering comes from either the drawing taking so long that you get to see the control erased, before you see it drawn (normally, those two follow so quickly that the erased image never actually makes it to the screen), or because there is so much going on that the screen can't completely draw in the time it has, so you get part of one image and part of the next. With a whole bunch of controls, you could have either. Getting rid of the panels would reduce the count of the number of controls, and that will help. Theoretically, you could probably get rid of the labels, too, though that may be too much work to bother with. That would require you to write the text on the form itself, which would be tedious, but getting rid of the panels would help.

If you have to show the user all that stuff, do you have to show it all at once? One alternative would be a tab control. I believe you don't get ANY drawing for controls not on the visible tab. They may not even be created until they are needed, so that would be more efficient. More exotic types of things, like slide-in controls, or swapable panels might also work, if you are allowed to do something like that. It would avoid the scrolling, but not all the controls would really be on the form at once.

[wes4dbt]

One alternative would be a tab control

Yeah that was one of the first things that came to my mind. If your already breaking data into sections then it seem like a good fit.

[dbasnett]

Yeah that was one of the first things that came to my mind. If your already breaking data into sections then it seem like a good fit.

You could even make it switch to the next tab when you tabbed out of the last textbox.

One form, 270 Textboxes!!!

[Shaggy Hiker]

That's not so bad. Had it been 288, then it would have been just two gross, but 270 isn't too gross.

[i00]

VB6 used to limit you to 255

... Also if you really need to do it this way you could load and unload controls as the master scrollablecontrol is scrolled... so it appears the same but only has ones in the view area (or near to) loaded.

[schoemr]

Hi everyone

Yes this form was very odd from beginning... I was not sure if I even want to try this..

Thank you for everyone advise. Here is Easter weekend so I won't have internet until next week..

i00.............................................. I don't have that with me here it on the pc at home.. then you also never reply

If I understand what was said here then I should remove that panel and better draw the boxes myself on the form. The only reason for wanting to use panels is because some information must be displayed in boxes (like grouped)

So this brings me to another question but for is not related to this question so I must start a new topic..

[Peter Porter]

How about having a few custom transparent richtextboxes act like more. Transparent, so you could have an image of a form as your background.

Anyway, each line of these richtextboxes will represent a textbox.

If there are no characters on a line, the backspace would be disable to prevent that line from being removed.

Each line would have it's own character limit.

Enter should be disabled to prevent new lines from being created. Also disabling all ways to indent, disable Wordwrap, and ensure that items pasted are DataFormats.Text

Clicking on a line would draw a focus glow around it's textbox on the background image.

Transparent Richtextbox

Public Class TransparentRTB
    Inherits RichTextBox

    Public Sub InitializeComponent()
    End Sub

    Protected Overrides ReadOnly Property CreateParams As CreateParams
        Get
            Dim CP As CreateParams = MyBase.CreateParams
            CP.ExStyle = CP.ExStyle Or &H20
            Return CP
        End Get
    End Property
End Class