How to set/change/remove focus style on a Button i

Question

I have a couple of buttons of which I modified how they look. I have set them as flat buttons with a background and a custom border so they look all pretty and nothing like normal buttons anymore (actually, they look like Office 2003 buttons now ;-). The buttons have a border of one pixel.

However when the button gets selected (gets the focus through either a click or a keyboard action like pressing the tab key) the button suddenly gets and extra border around it of the same colour, so making it a two pixel border. Moreover when I disable the one pixel border, the button does not get a one pixel border on focus.

On the net this question is asked a lot like 'How can I disable focus on a Button', but that's not what I want: the focus should still exist, just not display in the way it does now.

Any suggestions? :-)

Answer 1

Another option (although a bit hacktastic) is to attach an event-handler to the button's GotFocus event. In that event-handler, pass a value of False to the button's NotifyDefault() method. So, for instance:

void myButton_GotFocus(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
  myButton.NotifyDefault(false);
}

I'm assuming this will work every time, but I haven't tested it extensively. It's working for me for now, so I'm satisfied with that.

Answer 2

There is another way which works well for flat styled buttons. Don't use buttons but labels. As you are completely replacing the UI for the button it does not matter whether your use a button control or a label. Just handle the click in the same way.

This worked for me, although not great practice it is a good hack and as long as you name the button obviously (and comment the source) other coders will pick up the idea.

Ryan

Answer 3

Is this the effect you are looking for?

public class NoFocusCueButton : Button
{
    protected override bool ShowFocusCues
    {
        get
        {
            return false;
        }
    }
}

You can use this custom button class just like a regular button, but it won't give you an extra rectangle on focus.

Answer 4

You can also create an invisible button and make it active whenever you press another button.

Answer 5

If you have a textbox and a button then on textchange event of textbox write button1.focus();

It will work.

Answer 6

The second border which gets added is the Windows standard "default button" border. You may have noticed that if you tab through most dialog boxes with multiple buttons (such as any Control Panel properties window), the original "double-bordered" button becomes "normal," and the in-focus button becomes "double-bordered."

This isn't necessarily focus at work, but rather a visual indication of the action undertaken by hitting the Enter key.

It sounds, to me, like you don't really care about that internal working. You want the display to not have two borders -- totally understandable. The internal working is to explain why you're seeing this behavior. Now ... To try and fix it.

The first thing I'd try -- and bear in mind, I haven't validated this -- is a hack. When a button receives focus (thereby getting the double-border), turn off your single border. You might get the effect you want, and it's pretty simple. (Hook into the Focus event. Even better, subclass Button and override OnFocus, then use that subclass for your future buttons.)

However, that might introduce new, awkward visual side effects. In that vein -- and because hacks are rarely the best answer -- I have to "officially" recommend what others have said: Custom paint the button. Although the code here may be overkill, this link at CodeProject discusses how to do that (VB link; you'll need translate). You should, in a full-on custom mode, be able to get rid of that second border completely.