progressBar while MainFrom initialize

Question

I have a windows form application that needs to load a bunch of things before loading the Main window. I thought this would justify a ProgressBar, so I thought I display another form that contains the ProgressBar Control using the constructor of my main form.

It all works fine but if I try to put the text in a Label on the intro form its content won't show until the main form is loaded. Is here a way to avoid this other than loading the intro window first?

Answer 1

Warning: this post contains elements of self promotion ;o)

I would probably use a splash form in this case. I wrote a blog post a while ago (triggered by this SO Q&A) about a thread-safe splash form that could be used together will long-running main form initializations.

In short the approach is to using ShowDialog, but to create and display the form on a separate thread so it doesn't block the main thread. The form contains a status message label (could of course be extended with a progressbar as well). Then there is a static class that provides thread-safe methods for displaying, updating and closing the splash form.

Condensed code samples (for commented code samples, check the blog post):

using System;
using System.Windows.Forms;
public interface ISplashForm
{
    IAsyncResult BeginInvoke(Delegate method);
    DialogResult ShowDialog();
    void Close();
    void SetStatusText(string text);
}

using System.Windows.Forms;
public partial class SplashForm : Form, ISplashForm
{
    public SplashForm()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
    }
    public void SetStatusText(string text)
    {
        _statusText.Text = text;
    }
}

using System;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.Threading;
public static class SplashUtility<T> where T : ISplashForm
{
    private static T _splash = default(T);
    public static void Show()
    {
        ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem((WaitCallback)delegate
        {
            _splash = Activator.CreateInstance<T>();
            _splash.ShowDialog();
        });
    }

    public static void Close()
    {
        if (_splash != null)
        {
            _splash.BeginInvoke((MethodInvoker)delegate { _splash.Close(); });
        }
    }

    public static void SetStatusText(string text)
    {
        if (_splash != null)
        {
            _splash.BeginInvoke((MethodInvoker)delegate { _splash.SetStatusText(text); });
        }
    }
}

Example of usage:

SplashUtility<SplashForm>.Show();
SplashUtility<SplashForm>.SetStatusText("Working really hard...");
SplashUtility<SplashForm>.Close();