C# winforms startup (Splash) form not hiding

Question

I have a winforms application in which I am using 2 Forms to display all the necessary controls. The first Form is a splash screen in which it tells the user that it it loading etc. So I am using the following code:

Application.Run( new SplashForm() );

Once the application has completed loading I want the SplashForm to hide or me sent to the back and the main from to be show. I am currently using the following:

private void showMainForm()
{
    this.Hide();
    this.SendToBack();

    // Show the GUI
    mainForm.Show();
    mainForm.BringToFront();
}

What I am seeing is that the MainForm is shown, but the SplashForm is still visible 'on top'. What I am currently doing is clicking on the MainForm to manually bring it to the front. Any ideas on why this is happening?

Answer 1

Probably you just want to close the splash form, and not send it to back.

I run the splash form on a separate thread (this is class SplashForm):

class SplashForm
{
    //Delegate for cross thread call to close
    private delegate void CloseDelegate();

    //The type of form to be displayed as the splash screen.
    private static SplashForm splashForm;

    static public void ShowSplashScreen()
    {
        // Make sure it is only launched once.

        if (splashForm != null)
            return;
        Thread thread = new Thread(new ThreadStart(SplashForm.ShowForm));
        thread.IsBackground = true;
        thread.SetApartmentState(ApartmentState.STA);
        thread.Start();           
    }

    static private void ShowForm()
    {
        splashForm = new SplashForm();
        Application.Run(splashForm);
    }

    static public void CloseForm()
    {
        splashForm.Invoke(new CloseDelegate(SplashForm.CloseFormInternal));
    }

    static private void CloseFormInternal()
    {
        splashForm.Close();
        splashForm = null;
    }
...
}

and the main program function looks like this:

[STAThread]
static void Main(string[] args)
{
    SplashForm.ShowSplashScreen();
    MainForm mainForm = new MainForm(); //this takes ages
    SplashForm.CloseForm();
    Application.Run(mainForm);
}