WinForms and ShowDialog problem.

Posted by SchlaWiener on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by SchlaWiener
Published on 2010-05-27T16:29:49Z Indexed on 2010/05/27 16:31 UTC
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showdialog

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I have a borderless WinForms app.

The main window creates other forms (simple dialogs where I can click yes or no) with ShowDialog(). Every created dialog is not visible in the taskbar, my app has only one taskbar entry that focuses my app (and if a dialog is open that one is focused). If I use ALT+TAB to cycle to all open windows I only see one entry, too.

However, If the dialog is created while my app doesn't have the focus (for example the user starts a long running task, starts to work on something else and while being in the background, my app shows a dialog "Task done...") and I want to go back to my app, things are getting strange.

If I click on the taskbar to focus my app, the main window is focused (not the dialog).
I can't use the main window (because there is still an open modal dialog).
Windows 7 ALT-TAB preview shows the Dialog while taskbar mouseover preview shows the main window (In normal behavior both show the dialog in front of the main window).
The only way to make my app usable again is to ALT-TAB to the entry and close the modal dialog.
If I use ALT-TAB only the dialog is brought to the front and the main window is still in the background

Is there a way to prevent that from happening? I know what to do, but most customers think the app crashed since the main window doesn't respond.

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