What is the best way to create a wizard in C# 2.0?

Question

I have a winforms application where users will be creating stock items, and a time of creation there are a number of different things that need to happen.

I think the UI for this should probably be a wizard of some kind, but I'm unsure as to the best way to achieve this. I have seen a couple of 3rd party Wizard controls, and I have also seen manual implementations of making panel visible/invisible.

What are the best ways that people have used in the past, that are easy to implement, and also make it easy to add "pages" to the wizard later on if needed?

Answer 1

Use a tab-control inside a form.

Change back color to "Control" in all tab-pages.

Set "appearance" to flat buttons to get rid of the white border-stuff.

Hide the tabs by sizing the entire control so that the tabs gets pushed up "under" the title bar of the form. If you need other controls (or banner maybe) above the tab-control, then instead hide the tabs with a panel-control or similar.

Childplay to code logic for back/next buttons and very easy to extend with new pages.

Answer 2

Take a look at this article on MSDN about "inductive user interfaces". It describes a framework (and provides the code to download) based on UserControls that give you "navigation" within a form. Perfect for designing wizards.

Answer 3

I know this answer has already been accepted, but I just found a better Wizard control that's free, and of course, since it's on CodeProject, includes the source, so you can modify it if it's not exactly what you want. I'm adding this as an answer for the next person to stumble across this question looking for a good Wizard control.

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/miscctrl/DesignTimeWizard.aspx

Answer 4

The easiest way to create a wizard dialog is to use one of the third-party versions available that handle all of the "hard stuff" (the page navigation, UI framework, etc.) for you. The one I like the most is from Divelements; they have both a WinForms and a WPF version.

Answer 5

Here are a few more resources you should check out:

1. This DevExpress WinForms control: http://www.devexpress.com/Products/NET/Controls/WinForms/Wizard/

2. A home-grown wizards framework: http://weblogs.asp.net/justin_rogers/articles/60155.aspx

3. A wizard framework by Shawn Wildermut part of the Chris Sells's Genghis framework: http://www.sellsbrothers.com/tools/genghis/