>BUT he wants the application forms to remain modals, because he don't want users to hide or minimize forms, to avoid hot-line calls, and so on (in order the sofware to be cost/technic effective). So we have removed the Min and Max Buttons on each forms, also with the Control boxes. In certain circumstances, we also have Dialog Boxes. See ? Right. The problem remaining is that, with those modal forms, we can't minimize the application in a click.

ok. i think i got it. but that's one weird design. A Dilbert cartoon comes to mind...

>So, I still wonder which is the best solution. I'd prefer not use MDI (for the reason exposed above), and I have to have a kind of "container" form in the background...

Does the container form have to act like a MDI form, in that it looks like one? And if each form is modalish, how can other forms be active? You wrote that the user will be able to see other forms in the background. So the foreground form must be called from the background form, correct?

Does the foreground form have to be closed in order to access any other forms? I thinking you should be able to but some validation type code in the Activate and Deactivate events of the forms to determine whether the user can switch between forms or not.

This design-issue is not just VB specific. If you post this in the Visual FoxPro forum I'm sure you'll gets lots of suggestions, and we could easily translate any FoxPro code to VB if required.

Jody