DevExpress WinForms Tab Control

XtraTabControl is a container that organizes other controls into pages. Each page is an XtraTabPage with a clickable header; the active page fills the control's body. Use it to build a tabbed UI in a local area of a form — a settings dialog, a multi-section editor, a property pane.

Pages live in the XtraTabControl.TabPages collection. The active page is XtraTabControl.SelectedTabPage. The control lives in the DevExpress.XtraTab namespace and ships with the DevExpress.Win.Navigation NuGet package.

Use Cases and Alternatives: XtraTabControl is for organizing controls into pages in a fixed, local area — users cannot undock or rearrange pages. If you need a true MDI / document interface (floating, draggable, on-demand-loaded documents), use the Application UI Manager / DocumentManager or the simpler XtraTabbedMdiManager instead. For a browser-like form with page headers in the title bar, see Tabbed Form.

When to Use This Skill

• Adding a tabbed page UI to a form (settings, multi-section editor, property pane)
• Adding, removing, or reordering XtraTabPage pages in code or the designer
• Placing controls onto tab pages
• Positioning / orienting page headers (top, bottom, left, right; horizontal or vertical text)
• Wrapping headers into multiple rows when they don't fit (MultiLine)
• Showing Prev / Next / Close buttons in the header panel, or per-page Close buttons
• Responding to page selection (SelectedPageChanged/SelectedPageChanging) or close (CloseButtonClick) events
• Hiding headers and implementing wizard-style custom page navigation
• Adding icons or custom buttons to page headers