Application Design

[Chong]

I'm quite new to VB.NET, what's the best design format to create an application? Here's what I want to do. I want to do something similar to MS Outlook where if you click on the Inbox on the left, the right side interface changes and if you click on the Contact, again, the right side interface changes. Now, more precise questions. How is this done? Is this done by using panel? If it is, is this panel created at run time or design time? And back to my original question, what's the best design? I only have three things for now. If I'm going to use panels, I will only need three panels to display three different information.

Many thanks for your help!

ljCharlie

[DevGrp]

Yes, you can use panels. What I would do is create the panels at design time then set thier visible property to false. At run time when click on an icon just set visible to true for the panel you want to show.

[Chong]

But there is one problem that I'm having with the layer option in using panel. For example, I have two panels, panel1 and panel2. When I right click on panel1 and sent-to-back, panel1 doesn't go behind panel2 so that I can design panel2. Do you have any suggestion as to why this doesn't work?

Many thanks for your help.

ljCharlie

[nemaroller]

Most likely you created Panel2 as a child of Panel1...

Both panels need to have the underlying Form as their immediate parent, seems you have Panel1 as Panel2's parent...

EDIT: And additionally, I would inherit the Panel Control and create your own class out of it... this way you can create it dynamically... instead of defining 4 panels that essentially do the same thing: display an interface..

EDIT: to your followup question: Cut the 2nd panel out, select the form, then Paste it back...

[Chong]

How do I define so that the underlying form is the panels' parent?

Thanks for the help.

ljCharlie