Visual Basic 6 Black Book
(Publisher: The Coriolis Group)
Author(s): Steven Holzner
ISBN: 1576102831
Publication Date: 08/01/98

Chapter 15
Toolbars, Status Bars, Progress Bars, And Coolbars

If you need an immediate solution to:

Adding A Toolbar To A Form

Aligning Toolbars In A Form

Adding Buttons To A Toolbar

Handling Toolbar Buttons Clicks

Connecting Toolbar Buttons To Menu Items

Adding Separators To A Toolbar

Adding Images To Toolbar Buttons

Adding Check (Toggle) Buttons To A Toolbar

Creating Button Groups In A Toolbar

Adding Combo Boxes And Other Controls To A Toolbar

Setting Toolbar Button Tool Tips

Letting The User Customize The Toolbar

Adding Toolbar Buttons At Runtime

Adding A Status Bar To A Program

Aligning Status Bars In A Form

Adding Panels To A Status Bar

Displaying Text In A Status Bar

Displaying Time, Dates, And Key States In A Status Bar

Customizing A Status Bar Panel’s Appearance

Displaying Images In A Status Bar

Handling Panel Clicks

Adding New Panels To A Status Bar At Runtime

Creating Simple Status Bars

Adding A Progress Bar To A Form

Using A Progress Bar

Adding A Coolbar To A Form

Aligning Coolbars In A Form

Adding Bands To A Coolbar

Adding Controls To Coolbar Bands

Handling Coolbar Control Events

In Depth

In this chapter, we’re going to take a look at the bar controls: toolbars, status bars, progress bars, and coolbars. All these controls have their uses in Visual Basic programs, and users are coming to expect them more and more. We’ll start with an overview of these controls.

Toolbars

Every Windows user knows about toolbars: they’re those bars at the top of a window (although they can appear other places as well) that are filled with buttons and, sometimes, other controls like combo bars.

Often, a toolbar contains buttons that correspond to items in an application’s menu, providing an easy interface for the user to reach frequently used functions and commands. In this way, toolbars can make life a lot easier for the user. The user can also customize toolbars: double-clicking a toolbar at runtime opens the Customize Toolbar dialog box, which allows the user to hide, display, or rearrange toolbar buttons.

You create a toolbar by adding a toolbar control to a form, and to do that, you select the Project|Components menu item, then click the Controls tab in the Components dialog box, select the Microsoft Windows Common Controls item, and click on OK to close the Components dialog box. This adds the Toolbar Control tool to the Visual Basic toolbox, as shown in Figure 15.1; the Toolbar tool is the twelfth tool down on the left.

Figure 15.1  The Toolbar Control tool.

To add buttons to a toolbar, you add Button objects to its Buttons collection, usually by working with the toolbar’s property pages. Each button can have text and/or an image, (supplied by an associated ImageList control). Set text with the Caption property and an image with the Image property for each Button object. At runtime, you can add or remove buttons from the Buttons collection using Add and Remove methods.

Status Bars

Status bars appear at the bottom of windows and usually hold several panels in which you can display text. The status bar is there to give feedback to the user on program operation, as well as other items like time of day or key states (such as the Caps Lock or the Ins key). Although status bars usually display text in panels, there is a simple status bar style that makes the status bar function as one long panel, as we’ll see.

Status bars are built around the Panels collection, which holds the panels in the status bar. Up to 16 Panel objects can be contained in the collection. Each object can display an image and text, as shown later in this chapter. You can change the text, images, or widths of any Panel object, using its Text, Picture, and Width properties. To add Panel objects at design time, right-click the status bar, and click Properties to display the Property Pages dialog box. (We’ll cover the procedure in more detail later in the chapter.)

You add the Status Bar Control tool to the toolbox by following the same steps to add the Toolbar Control tool, because the status bar control is also part of the Microsoft Windows common controls. The Status Bar Control tool is the twelfth tool down on the right in Figure 15.2.

Figure 15.2  The Status Bar Control tool.

Progress Bars

Progress bars give the user some visual feedback on what’s happening during a time-consuming operation. They present the user with a color bar that grows in the control to show how the operation is proceeding, usually from 0 to 100 percent. You can use a progress bar when an operation will take some time to finish. The progress bar’s Value property (not available at design time) determines how much of the control has been filled. The Min and Max properties set the limits of the control.

You add the Progress Bar Control tool to the toolbox by following the same steps to add the toolbar tool, because the progress bar control is also part of the Microsoft Windows common controls. The Progress Bar Control tool is the thirteenth tool down on the left in Figure 15.3.

Figure 15.3  The Progress Bar Control and the Coolbar Control tools.

Coolbars

Coolbars were first introduced in the Microsoft Internet Explorer, and they are toolbars that present controls in bands. Users can adjust these bands by dragging a gripper, which appears at left in a band. In this way, users can configure the coolbar by sliding the bands around as they want. One popular use of coolbars is to display toolbars in the bands of that coolbar, allowing users to move those toolbars around as they want.

The Coolbar Control tool is on the bottom, at left, in the Visual Basic toolbox in Figure 15.3. These controls can act just as toolbars do, as we’ll see.

That’s it for the overview—it’s time to turn to the Immediate Solutions.

Immediate Solutions

Adding A Toolbar To A Form

The Testing Department is calling again. Your program, SuperDuperTextPro, is wonderful—but what about putting in a toolbar? That would make things easier for the program’s users, because they could click buttons in the toolbar instead of having to open menu items. So how do you add a toolbar to a form?