First of all, if you're creating tabbed interface, you should never use
MDIChildForm
,
MDIParent
and other MDI stuff. What you call "Tabbed MDI" is not MDI at all.
And this is good. I would advise:
never use MDI! But Tabbed UI is quite good.
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_document_interface#Disadvantages[^],
Question on using MDI windows in WPF[^],
MDIContainer giving error[^].
You never need to know exact location of this panel. The question is: location relative to what? You can translate all coordinates to scree coordinates. How to do it depends on what UI library you use: WPF, Forms or something else. You will easily find this conversion; for example, see
System.Windows.Forms.Control.PointToScreen
.
Always tag UI library when you ask a UI-related question!
You should always avoid using explicit coordinate of control. Instead, try to use
Dock
(or
DockingPanel
) with
Padding
and/or
Margin
.
Please see my direction for UI desing:
GUI Apperance - C#.Net[
^],
Zom Out malfunctions when Screen resolution changes[
^],
how to dock button so that it can adjust with the form[
^] (code sample here).
—SA