TabControl with Close and Add Button

Question

I\'m tring to make a tab control have a \"x\" (close button) and \"+\" (new tab button). I found a solution to add a x button, the tab looks like this now:

Answer 1

Normally, the direct, "low-level" way to do something like this would be to handle the Paint event and draw into the TabControl itself, and then also handle mouse input events to detect clicks where you have drawn.

However, a) that's a pain, and b) the TabControl suppresses the Paint event, so it's not possible to handle without going even lower-level and dealing with the WM_PAINT message in a WndProc() method override.

For your purposes, I would recommend simply adding a new control, e.g. a Button, to the Form, placing it just over the place on the TabControl where you want the user to be able to click. Then in the Button.Click event handler, you can add a new page as desired. If you want to encapsulate the combination of the Button and the TabControl, you can use a UserControl.

For example:

TabControlWithAdd.Designer.cs:

partial class TabControlWithAdd
{
    /// 
 
    /// Required designer variable.
    /// 
    private System.ComponentModel.IContainer components = null;

    /// 
 
    /// Clean up any resources being used.
    /// 
    /// true if managed resources should be disposed; otherwise, false.
    protected override void Dispose(bool disposing)
    {
        if (disposing && (components != null))
        {
            components.Dispose();
        }
        base.Dispose(disposing);
    }

    #region Component Designer generated code

    /// 
 
    /// Required method for Designer support - do not modify 
    /// the contents of this method with the code editor.
    /// 
    private void InitializeComponent()
    {
        this.button1 = new System.Windows.Forms.Button();
        this.tabControl1 = new System.Windows.Forms.TabControl();
        this.tabPage1 = new System.Windows.Forms.TabPage();
        this.tabPage2 = new System.Windows.Forms.TabPage();
        this.tabControl1.SuspendLayout();
        this.SuspendLayout();
        // 
        // button1
        // 
        this.button1.Anchor = ((System.Windows.Forms.AnchorStyles)((System.Windows.Forms.AnchorStyles.Top | System.Windows.Forms.AnchorStyles.Right)));
        this.button1.Location = new System.Drawing.Point(247, 3);
        this.button1.Name = "button1";
        this.button1.Size = new System.Drawing.Size(23, 23);
        this.button1.TabIndex = 0;
        this.button1.Text = "+";
        this.button1.UseVisualStyleBackColor = true;
        this.button1.Click += new System.EventHandler(this.button1_Click);
        // 
        // tabControl1
        // 
        this.tabControl1.Anchor = ((System.Windows.Forms.AnchorStyles)((((System.Windows.Forms.AnchorStyles.Top | System.Windows.Forms.AnchorStyles.Bottom) 
        | System.Windows.Forms.AnchorStyles.Left) 
        | System.Windows.Forms.AnchorStyles.Right)));
        this.tabControl1.Controls.Add(this.tabPage1);
        this.tabControl1.Controls.Add(this.tabPage2);
        this.tabControl1.Location = new System.Drawing.Point(3, 3);
        this.tabControl1.Name = "tabControl1";
        this.tabControl1.SelectedIndex = 0;
        this.tabControl1.Size = new System.Drawing.Size(267, 181);
        this.tabControl1.TabIndex = 1;
        // 
        // tabPage1
        // 
        this.tabPage1.Location = new System.Drawing.Point(4, 25);
        this.tabPage1.Name = "tabPage1";
        this.tabPage1.Padding = new System.Windows.Forms.Padding(3);
        this.tabPage1.Size = new System.Drawing.Size(259, 152);
        this.tabPage1.TabIndex = 0;
        this.tabPage1.Text = "tabPage1";
        this.tabPage1.UseVisualStyleBackColor = true;
        // 
        // tabPage2
        // 
        this.tabPage2.Location = new System.Drawing.Point(4, 25);
        this.tabPage2.Name = "tabPage2";
        this.tabPage2.Padding = new System.Windows.Forms.Padding(3);
        this.tabPage2.Size = new System.Drawing.Size(192, 71);
        this.tabPage2.TabIndex = 1;
        this.tabPage2.Text = "tabPage2";
        this.tabPage2.UseVisualStyleBackColor = true;
        // 
        // TabControlWithAdd
        // 
        this.AutoScaleDimensions = new System.Drawing.SizeF(8F, 16F);
        this.AutoScaleMode = System.Windows.Forms.AutoScaleMode.Font;
        this.Controls.Add(this.button1);
        this.Controls.Add(this.tabControl1);
        this.Name = "TabControlWithAdd";
        this.Size = new System.Drawing.Size(273, 187);
        this.tabControl1.ResumeLayout(false);
        this.ResumeLayout(false);

    }

    #endregion

    private System.Windows.Forms.Button button1;
    private System.Windows.Forms.TabControl tabControl1;
    private System.Windows.Forms.TabPage tabPage1;
    private System.Windows.Forms.TabPage tabPage2;
}

TabControlWithAdd.cs:

public partial class TabControlWithAdd : UserControl
{
    public TabControlWithAdd()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
    }

    private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        tabControl1.TabPages.Add("Tab " + (tabControl1.TabPages.Count + 1));
    }
}

The above uses Button, but of course you can use any other clickable control you like, including Label (e.g. if you don't want the button border appearance), to produce the visual effect you want.