Building a Tab System in Windows Forms using C#

In this little tutorial, you will learn to make a tab system like Notepad++, Charny NotePad, Firefox, etc.

First of all, I'll explain what we will do. We will make a notepad application with a tab system.

1) Open your IDE and start a new windows forms application project.

2) Add these controls to the form :

Control	Name	Properties
TabControl	tabControl	Set 'Dock' to 'Fill'
MenuStrip	menuStrip	Don't change anything

Now, you will add two ToolStripMenuItem to menuStrip, 'File' and 'Edit'.





After, add one ToolStripMenuItem in 'File', his text will be 'New' and his name will be menuNew.




Add four ToolStripMenuItem and a ToolStripSeparator to the 'Edit' menu :

Text	Name
Cut	menuCut
Copy	menuCopy
Paste	menuPaste
	toolStripSeparator1
Select All	menuSelectAll

3) Add a Click event handler to menuNew :

private void menuNew_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

    TabPage tp = new TabPage("New Document");

    RichTextBox rtb = new RichTextBox();

    rtb.Dock = DockStyle.Fill;

    tp.Controls.Add(rtb);

    tabControl.TabPages.Add(tp);

}

You can try the program now. When you press on 'New' it creates a new TabPage with a RichTextBox in tabControl. It works, but if you have many tab pages, how could you execute actions to the selected RichTextBox?

4) Add this method in your code :

private RichTextBox GetActiveEditor()

{

   TabPage tp = tabControl.SelectedTab;

   RichTextBox rtb = null;

   if (tp != null)

   {

       rtb = tp.Controls[0] as RichTextBox;

   }

   return rtb;

}

So, this method retreives the first control of the selected tab. The first control is the RichTextBox.

5) Now, we will add a Click event handler on each ToolStripMenuItem of the 'Edit' menu.

menuCut:

private void menuCut_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

    GetActiveEditor().Cut();

}

menuCopy:

private void menuCopy_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

    GetActiveEditor().Copy();

}

menuPaste:

private void menuPaste_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

    GetActiveEditor().Paste();

}

menuSelectAll:

private void menuSelectAll_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

    GetActiveEditor().SelectAll();

}