.net - How to create a C# Winforms Control that hovers

Question

How can you create a C# Winforms control which goes out of the bounds of its region? Such as a drop down box. Kind of like if you had a DropDownBox in a Small Sized Panel.

Answer 1

Windows Forms doesn't support windows like that well, it is pretty fundamentally incompatible with the designer. Here's some code to get you started. You can't use this control in the designer, it must be created at run-time. You also must call its Dispose() method yourself.

using System;
using System.Drawing;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Windows.Forms;

public class MyListBox : ListBox {
  private Control mParent;
  private Point mPos;
  private bool mInitialized;

  public MyListBox(Control parent) {
    mParent = parent;
    mInitialized = true;
    this.SetTopLevel(true);
    parent.LocationChanged += new EventHandler(parent_LocationChanged);
    mPos = mParent.Location;
  }

  public new Point Location {
    get { return mParent.PointToClient(this.Location); }
    set { 
      Point zero = mParent.PointToScreen(Point.Empty);
      base.Location = new Point(zero.X + value.X, zero.Y + value.Y);
    }
  }

  protected override Size DefaultSize {
    get {
      return mInitialized ? base.DefaultSize : Size.Empty;
    }
  }

  protected override void SetBoundsCore(int x, int y, int width, int height, BoundsSpecified specified) {
    if (this.mInitialized)
      base.SetBoundsCore(x, y, width, height, specified);
  }

  void parent_LocationChanged(object sender, EventArgs e) {
    base.Location = new Point(base.Left + mParent.Left - mPos.X, base.Top + mParent.Top - mPos.Y);
    mPos = mParent.Location;
  }

  protected override CreateParams CreateParams {
    get {
      CreateParams cp = base.CreateParams;
      if (mParent != null && !DesignMode) {
        cp.Style = (int)(((long)cp.Style & 0xffff) | 0x90200000);
        cp.Parent = mParent.Handle;
        Point pos = mParent.PointToScreen(Point.Empty);
        cp.X = pos.X;
        cp.Y = pos.Y;
        cp.Width = base.DefaultSize.Width;
        cp.Height = base.DefaultSize.Height;
      }
      return cp;
    }
  }
}