The NetXP Tab Control

Introduction

The NetXP tab control is designed for use with the NetXP docking and tabbed groups, but can also be used as a stand-alone control. It has full design-time support as well as custom rendering support, utilizing the docking renderers.

Usage

Use this control much like you would use the Windows Forms default tab control. The properties and events are fairly self-explanatory.

Appearance

The appearance of the tab control can be modified by changing the TabPosition property. By setting this property to Top, you can use the tab control for tabbed MDI or as a regular tab control. If you set this property to Bottom, you will create a tab control similar to the one used by the NetXP docking windows.

Tab Pages

Tab pages derive from the Panel class, and therefore can be used to contain one or more controls. However, you may also assign another control to the TabPage's Control property which will be displayed when the tab page is selected. This can be useful when you don't know the control that will be displayed until runtime, or if you have to show a control that derives from Form or UserControl. The existence of the Control property is primarily due to the need for greater flexibility and enhanced code reuse. For example, if you have a form somewhere in your project that contains all the logic and controls you need for a certain part of your application, you can just instantiate that form and assign it to the Control property of a tab page and immediately have that form show up within the tab page.