How to Create a Virtual Keyboard

Environment

Product Version	Product	Author
2019.1.219	UI for WinForms	Desislava Yordanova

Description

A common requirement is to display a virtual keyboard for editing fields in your application. However, it is quite important to introduce consistent look and feel to the end users. This SDK example aims to introduce a sample approach how to achieve the illustrated behavior below.

Solution

The following MSDN solution is used as a starting point. It is just extended to use the Telerik UI for WinForms suite with the Fluent theme applied: Create a soft keyboard (CSSoftKeyboard)

The sample demonstrates how to create a soft keyboard. It has the following features

1. It will not get focus when a key button is clicked.

2. If the user presses the left mouse button within its non-client area (such as the title bar), it will be activated. When the left mouse button is released, it will activate the previous foreground Window.

3. When user clicks a character on it, like A or 1, it will send the key to the active application.

4. It supports special keys, like "WinKey" "Delete".

5. It supports the combination of keys, like Ctrl+C.

NOTE: Ctrl+Alt+Del is not supported as it will cause security issue.

A complete solution providing a C# and VB.NET project is available here.