Visual-studio – How to you bring a control to front in mfc

mfcvisual c++visual studio

How do you change controls' Z-order in MFC at design time – i.e. I can't use SetWindowPos or do this at runtime – I want to see the changed z-order in the designer (even if I have to resort to direct-editing the .rc code).

I have an MFC dialog to which I am adding controls. If there is overlap between the edges of the controls, I want to bring one to the front of the other. In Windows Forms or WPF, etc. I can Bring to Front, Send to Back, Bring Forward, Send Back. I don't find these options in MFC, nor can I tell how it determines what is in front, as a control just added is often behind a control that was there previously. How can I manipulate the Z-order in MFC? Even if I have to manipulate the .rc file code directly (i.e. end-run around the designer).

Best Answer

I think the control in front will be the last control that occurs in the rc file. In other words, the dialog editor will draw each control as it is encountered from top to bottom in the rc file, overlapping them when necessary.

You can edit the rc file to reorder them, or you can change the tab order in the editor, which does the same thing since tab order is also set based on the order that the controls occur in the file. To my knowledge MFC doesn't offer any other way of layering overlapping controls at design time.

Related Solutions

Visual-studio – How to rename a project folder from within Visual Studio

TFS users: If you are using source control that requires you to warn it before your rename files/folders then look at this answer instead which covers the extra steps required.

To rename a project's folder, file (.*proj) and display name in Visual Studio:

Close the solution.
Rename the folder(s) outside Visual Studio. (Rename in TFS if using source control)
Open the solution, ignoring the warnings (answer "no" if asked to load a project from source control).
Go through all the unavailable projects and...
- Open the properties window for the project (highlight the project and press Alt+Enter or F4, or right-click > properties).
- Set the property 'File Path' to the new location.
  - If the property is not editable (as in Visual Studio 2012), then open the .sln file directly in another editor such as Notepad++ and update the paths there instead. (You may need to check-out the solution first in TFS, etc.)
- Reload the project - right-click > reload project.
- Change the display name of the project, by highlighting it and pressing F2, or right-click > rename.

Note: Other suggested solutions that involve removing and then re-adding the project to the solution will break project references.

If you perform these steps then you might also consider renaming the following to match:

Assembly
Default/Root Namespace
Namespace of existing files (use the refactor tools in Visual Studio or ReSharper's inconsistent namespaces tool)

Also consider modifying the values of the following assembly attributes:

AssemblyProductAttribute
AssemblyDescriptionAttribute
AssemblyTitleAttribute

Visual-studio – How to count the lines of code in a Visual Studio solution

I've found powershell useful for this. I consider LoC to be a pretty bogus metric anyway, so I don't believe anything more formal should be required.

From a smallish solution's directory:

PS C:\Path> (gci -include *.cs,*.xaml -recurse | select-string .).Count
8396
PS C:\Path>

That will count the non-blank lines in all the solution's .cs and .xaml files. For a larger project, I just used a different extension list:

PS C:\Other> (gci -include *.cs,*.cpp,*.h,*.idl,*.asmx -recurse | select-string .).Count
909402
PS C:\Other>

Why use an entire app when a single command-line will do it? :)

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Visual-studio – How to rename a project folder from within Visual Studio

Visual-studio – How to count the lines of code in a Visual Studio solution

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