Thanks for the immediate response! I really appreciate that.

I am not using SCSF so I must say it is the same approach for the MVC pattern in CAB without SCSF.

But here is my detailed problem..

I have a document-centric application in which the user can say new document or open document from the UI extension site. I handle that command in the main workitem, deserialize in my business logic and check whether it is password protected. If it is, then I will show a dialog to take the password. As I understand, if I use WindowWorkspace, it doesn’t return DialogResult so then how to handle that…do I design a normal for as a dialog or it is a breach of CAB architecture? Normally in CAB all views are user controls[SmartParts].

Secondly, in regard to Message boxes, as the user says new document, I just check if the other document is already open, and if it is, I just want to prompt user to close current and open new. In this case, I want to show the message box. Now this is also handled in my workitem not in controller.

The thing is I am using CAB for hte first time as we have multiple such application and later if we want to integrate these, the effort would be less due to the modular architecture of CAB.

I would definitely appreciate your help.

Regards,
Amit

I am a newbie to CAB and am using CAB first time in my project. I am not using SCSF so I am not sure how should I use this in my project but I desperately seeking such functionality.

Please help me out.

- Amit

I’m taking a second swing at this as I have a situation where I need to get a DialogResult back from my Modal Views.

I read your post and jumped into the sample, right away I realized that these really are intended (as you said) to only be simple dialogs. In my situation I need to show some very complex Views complete with MVP – looking at your sample I’m not seeing how I could do this.

For example, if you wanted to use MVP on your login view, how would you go about that?

I’m sure it’s obvious, but I’m not seeing it.

Thanks for this great post, it must have taken you quite awhile to put this together, I appreciate it.

-Steve

To have a non-modal MessageBox you would have to write your own dialog class.

In terms of CAB, nothing changes either way. The best pattern to use is still the same: have the presenter make a request to the view and allow the view to handle the implementation details. It could then either show a MessageBox, Dialog, or custom class if your choosing.

I would personally beware of non-modal “messagebox” type of classes however. A MessageBox is meant to interrupt the user; it demands user attention. It is not meant to be ignored. A non-modal MessageBox would be like internet porn spam; you could potentially have dozens of messageboxes opening on the user simultaneously flooding them with little windows. If you need to notify the user of something but you don’t consider the notification important enough to use a MessageBox in a modal manner (not wanting to interrupt the user) then consider utilizing some other notification method, like the status strip or a textbox on the toolbar.

Think long and hard about the situation you’re dealing with and the proper way to design a solution.