Making a WinForms TextBox behave like your browser’s address bar

by

First of all, thanks for answers! 9 total answers. Thank you.

Bad news: all of the answers had some quirks or didn’t work quite right (or at all). I’ve added a comment to each of your posts.

Good news: I’ve found a way to make it work. This solution is pretty straightforward and seems to work in all the scenarios (mousing down, selecting text, tabbing focus, etc.)

bool alreadyFocused;

...

textBox1.GotFocus += textBox1_GotFocus;
textBox1.MouseUp += textBox1_MouseUp;
textBox1.Leave += textBox1_Leave;

...

void textBox1_Leave(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    alreadyFocused = false;
}


void textBox1_GotFocus(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    // Select all text only if the mouse isn't down.
    // This makes tabbing to the textbox give focus.
    if (MouseButtons == MouseButtons.None)
    {
        this.textBox1.SelectAll();
        alreadyFocused = true;
    }
}

void textBox1_MouseUp(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
{
    // Web browsers like Google Chrome select the text on mouse up.
    // They only do it if the textbox isn't already focused,
    // and if the user hasn't selected all text.
    if (!alreadyFocused && this.textBox1.SelectionLength == 0)
    {
        alreadyFocused = true;
        this.textBox1.SelectAll();
    }
}

As far as I can tell, this causes a textbox to behave exactly like a web browser’s address bar.

Hopefully this helps the next guy who tries to solve this deceptively simple problem.

Thanks again, guys, for all your answers that helped lead me towards the correct path.

More Related Contents:

  1. Watermark TextBox in WinForms
  2. How can I add a hint text to WPF textbox?
  3. Custom titlebars/chrome in a WinForms app
  4. How do I fill an empty textbox with default text?
  5. What’s the difference between Control.Select() and Control.Focus()?
  6. Standard Windows menu bars in Windows Forms
  7. How do I make a ListBox refresh its item text?
  8. How do I make a textbox that only accepts numbers?
  9. How can I set the opacity or transparency of a Panel in WinForms?
  10. Is it safe just to set CheckForIllegalCrossThreadCalls to false to avoid cross threading errors during debugging?
  11. Trying to use the C# SpellCheck class
  12. Disabling .NET progressbar animation when changing value?
  13. Controlling Application’s Volume: By Process-ID
  14. Winforms – Click/drag anywhere in the form to move it as if clicked in the form caption [duplicate]
  15. Form_Load() ‘event’ or Override OnLoad()
  16. Change the borderColor of the TextBox
  17. How to troubleshoot and debug Visual Studio design mode errors?
  18. Zoom in on a web page using WebBrowser .NET control
  19. How to improve painting performance of DataGridView?
  20. How to get Windows native look for the .NET TreeView?
  21. How to use Observable.FromEvent instead of FromEventPattern and avoid string literal event names
  22. Invoke in Windows Forms
  23. Can/Does WPF have multiple GUI threads?
  24. How to make a Windows Forms .NET application display as tray icon?
  25. Dragging an image in WPF
  26. How do you databind to a System.Windows.Forms.Treeview control?
  27. Assigning a value to ComboBox Items
  28. Maintain scroll position of treeview
  29. Using a custom WPF control in WinForms
  30. How to determine ACTUAL windows form size (with all nonclient elements) when running Aero?

Leave a Comment