Single Form Hide on Startup

c# vb.net winforms
Pondidum picture Pondidum · Sep 16, 2008 · Viewed 122.2k times · Source

I have an application with one form in it, and on the Load method I need to hide the form.

The form will display itself when it has a need to (think along the lines of a outlook 2003 style popup), but I can' figure out how to hide the form on load without something messy.

Any suggestions?

Answer

Grokys picture Grokys · Sep 16, 2008

I'm coming at this from C#, but should be very similar in vb.net.

In your main program file, in the Main method, you will have something like:

Application.Run(new MainForm());

This creates a new main form and limits the lifetime of the application to the lifetime of the main form.

However, if you remove the parameter to Application.Run(), then the application will be started with no form shown and you will be free to show and hide forms as much as you like.

Rather than hiding the form in the Load method, initialize the form before calling Application.Run(). I'm assuming the form will have a NotifyIcon on it to display an icon in the task bar - this can be displayed even if the form itself is not yet visible. Calling Form.Show() or Form.Hide() from handlers of NotifyIcon events will show and hide the form respectively.

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