Programming .NET Windows Applications

Tabbed Pages

A loose-leaf notebook with tabbed separator pages is an efficient way to organize and present a large amount of information in a compact space. The labeled tab on each separator page clearly separates and identifies the contents of that section. Although you can be in only one section at a time, you can easily see the labels of all available sections and instantly move between them.

This tabbed notebook metaphor, a common user interface design pattern in the Windows world, is implemented in .NET with the TabControl, which contains a collection of TabPage objects. All TabPage objects are layered one on top of another, with only one tab page visible at a time. Select which page to view by clicking on the tab. Each tab page can contain any number of controls.

Referring back to the class hierarchy displayed in Figure 13-1, you can see that the TabControl class is directly derived from the Control class, while the TabPage class is derived from Control via ScrollableControl and Panel. The TabControl control cannot contain other controls, except for TabPage objects. The TabPage objects, on the other hand, can contain other controls and have scrollbars. Unlike the Panel control from which it is derived, the TabPage displays its Text property as the text string on the tab.

The TabControl control has many properties in addition to those inherited from Control. Many are listed in Table 13-1.

Table 13-1. TabControl properties

Property	Value type	Description
Alignment	TabAlignment ...