I am building a UI for an application that has quite a few exclusions, at least that is what I call them. What I mean is that when I select Option 3, Options 12, 14 and Item 5 in ListBoxJ are disabled because the are mutually exclusive of Option 3.

I can do it by coding
ad infinitum for each and every option on my form (currently 17 controls but will grow as the application develops). I am wondering if there is some standard way of dealing with this in the VB.Net world, or is it just a manual process like I described.

Thanks for any hints.

misterqj

Is there a pattern to this?

There isn't really a pattern. The interface is alot like a print driver. When you select one option for the device, other options get disabled because they don't apply. The set of controls that get disabled when Option1 is selected is very diferent from the set the gets disabled when Option3 is selected.

I think you’re just going to have to do it the long-winded way.

When I have had to do things like this in the past I have tried to create a routine (a Sub) that encapsulates the behavior. So I have a Sub like 'Option_1()' that sets all of the controls one way, one named 'Option_2()' that sets them another, and so on (with meaningful names for the Subs).
That way I can set the line-after-line-after-line of code off to the side, and have a much more readable routine where the particular selection is being ascertained.

Thanks for the input Brian. That is effectively what I ended up doing. I tried a couple of different permutations using arrays, but it really ended up being messier.

Putting the UI managment code in it's own sub at least keeps it out of the way visually.