Loading Panels / Splash Forms (WinForms)

• Dec 22, 2023
• 3 minutes to read

This article provides a general overview of splash forms. It shows splash forms available in XAF, describes how they are initialized, and provides information on how to customize them.

Splash forms are forms XAF WinForms applications show automatically at the application’s startup and when users log in. You can also show splash forms when the application retrieves or saves data or for other operations that may run long - to indicate progress.

The following splash forms are available:

Splash Form Name	Default Use Scenarios	Possible Use Scenarios	Splash Form Appearance
A Splash Screen	At the application’s startup	To indicate progress when the application retrieves data or when an application exits and saves all related data.
An Overlay Form	When you log in	To indicate progress and disable the current window while the application accesses data.
A Wait Form	Not shown	At the application’s startup or to indicate progress when the application loads data.
A Splash Image	Not shown	To show an image that indicates progress on an application’s startup or when an application works with the database.

XAF uses a DXSplashScreen instance and the WinForms Splash Screen Manager to show, update, and close splash forms. If you need to access additional methods, use the SplashScreenManager component directly.

Splash Form Initialization

When you create a new XAF WinForms Application, the Solution Wizard sets the WinApplication.SplashScreen property value to a new DXSplashScreen instance. The Solution Wizard uses the DXSplashScreen(Type, DefaultOverlayFormOptions) constructor.

You can find this code in the WinForms Application project‘s WinApplication.cs (WinApplication.vb) file.

namespace MySolution.Win {
    public partial class MySolutionWindowsFormsApplication : WinApplication {
        public MySolutionWindowsFormsApplication() {
            //...
            SplashScreen = new DXSplashScreen(typeof(XafSplashScreen), new DefaultOverlayFormOptions());
            ExecuteStartupLogicBeforeClosingLogonWindow = true;
        }
        // ...
    }
}

Namespace MySolution.Win
    Partial Public Class MySolutionWindowsFormsApplication
        Inherits WinApplication
        Public Sub New()
            '...
            SplashScreen = New DXSplashScreen(GetType(XafSplashScreen), New DefaultOverlayFormOptions())
            ExecuteStartupLogicBeforeClosingLogonWindow = True
        End Sub
        ' ...
    End Class
End Namespace

The Solution Wizard sets the ExecuteStartupLogicBeforeClosingLogonWindow property to true in all new XAF applications. This setting keeps the Logon Window and the Overlay Form open until the Main Window loads and while all Startup Actions are executed. For this purpose, the wizard generates new projects with the FrameworkSettings.DefaultSettingsCompatibilityMode property set to Latest.

All new XAF WinForms applications show the default Splash Screen and Overlay Form.

Splash Form Customization

You can customize your application’s splash forms in several ways:

• Manage splash forms in an application
• Customize built-in splash forms
• Create and show splash forms
• Use a custom class to show splash forms

You can also localize splash forms.