Creating a Settings Tab

In a previous section of this tutorial, Creating a Console Tab, you extended the Windows Home Server Console by creating a new Console tab as part of a Windows Home Server add-in. This section walks through the basics of how to extend the Windows Home Server Console by creating a new Settings tab.

The Windows Home Server Settings Dialog

When the Windows Home Server Settings dialog is open, it displays all of the installed Settings tabs on the left side of the dialog. When a particular Settings tab is selected, the pane area on the right side of the dialog changes to display the control associated with that Settings tab.

The ISettingsTab Interface

To create a Settings tab for the Windows Home Server Console, an ISettingsTab interface must be implemented. The interface is virtually identical to the IConsoleTab interface that you implemented to create a custom Console tab. In fact, the ISettingsTab interface inherits from the IConsoleTab interface, so it contains all of the same methods and properties, with the addition of one new method, Commit.

For example, when you implement the TabImage and TabText properties for your Settings tab, you define how your tab appears on the left side of the Windows Home Server Settings dialog. When you implement the TabControl property, you define the associated control that appears on the right side of the Windows Home Server Settings dialog when your tab is selected.

Like a Console tab, a Settings tab can provide a complex user interface for users to interact with your application. For the purpose of this tutorial, however, you create a control that has very limited functionality.

In this section

Writing the Settings Tab Code

See Also

Concepts

Extending the Windows Home Server Console
Creating a Console Tab