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

Let’s see an example. Insert a new button into a toolbar and set its Style property to tbrSeparator, as shown in Figure 15.8.

Figure 15.8  Adding a spacer to a toolbar.

Now add other buttons, and click on OK to close the toolbar’s property pages. When you do, you’ll see that the separator puts some distance between the buttons, as shown in Figure 15.9.

Figure 15.9  Using a separator in a toolbar.

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TIP:  Although toolbar separators just look like blank space, they count as buttons, which means that they have their own Index value. That means that you have to take separators into account when figuring a button’s Index value in your toolbar in order to handle it when it’s clicked.

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Adding Images To Toolbar Buttons

The Aesthetic Design Department is calling. Your new toolbar looks great, but it would look even better if you used images in the buttons and not text captions. How about it?

You can give toolbar buttons if you place those images into an image list control. Image lists are Windows common controls just as toolbars are, so add an image list to a program now.

To place the images you want in the buttons in the image list, follow these steps:

1.  Right-click the image list control.

2.  Select the Properties menu item.

3.  Click the Images tab in the image control’s property pages.

4.  Click the Insert Picture button to insert the first image (you can browse through your hard disks and select the images you want).

5.  Keep going until all the images have been added to the image control, then click on OK to close the property pages.

Now you need to associate the image control with the toolbar, and you do that in the toolbar’s property pages; just follow these steps:

1.  Right-click the toolbar and select the Properties item to open the toolbar’s property pages, as shown in Figure 15.10.

Figure 15.10  Adding images from an image control to a toolbar.

2.  Next, click the Buttons tab in the property pages, as shown in Figure 15.11.

Figure 15.11  Connecting images from an image control to toolbar buttons.

3.  Enter the index of the image in the image control you want to connect to the first button in the box labeled Image (image lists are 1-based).

4.  Keep going for the other buttons, entering the image control indices of the images you want to connect to those buttons.

5.  Click on OK to close the property pages.

When you run the program, the images appear in the toolbar.

You can also connect an image control to a toolbar at runtime, using the toolbar’s ImageList property:

Private Sub Command1_Click()
    Toolbar1.ImageList = ImageList1
End Sub

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TIP:  Visual Basic comes with the standard bitmaps you’ll find in Windows toolbars—just check the common\graphics\bitmaps\offctlbr\small\color directory.

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Adding Check (Toggle) Buttons To A Toolbar

The Testing Department is calling again: The toolbar you’ve added to your program, SuperDuperTextPro, is terrific, but there’s one problem. One of the menu items, the Insert item, displays a checkmark next to it when the user toggles that mode on. Can’t you add a checkmark to the Insert button in the toolbar as well?

The way toolbars handle this problem instead of displaying checkmarks is to keep a button depressed once it’s been pressed. In this way, you can show toggle states. Let’s take a look at an example.

To make a toolbar button a “check” button, you must set its Style property to tbrCheck, and you do that in the toolbar’s property pages. Right-click the toolbar now and select the Properties item to open the property pages. Click the Buttons tab in the property pages, as shown in Figure 15.12.

Figure 15.12  Making a toolbar button a check button.

Select the button you want to work with, and set its style to tbrCheck, as shown in Figure 15.12. That’s it. Now when the user clicks the button, it stays clicked, as shown in Figure 15.13, until the user clicks it again.

Figure 15.13  A check toolbar button at work.

Creating Button Groups In A Toolbar

You may notice in some toolbars that a set of buttons are mutually exclusive—for example, if your word processor lets you align text to the right, left, and center with buttons in a toolbar, only one of those styles can be active at once. When the user clicks one, the others should toggle off.

You can set up groups of mutually exclusive buttons in toolbars, just as you can with groups of option buttons (in fact, that’s just what button groups in a toolbar resemble: a group of graphical [Style = 1] option buttons).

To create a button group, just follow these steps:

1.  Open the toolbar’s property pages by right-clicking the toolbar and selecting the Properties item.

2.  Click the Buttons tab.

3.  Select the button in the button group, and set its style to tbrButtonGroup in the Style box, as shown in Figure 15.14.

Figure 15.14  Creating a button group in a toolbar.

4.  Repeat Step 3 for the other buttons in the button group.

5.  Click on OK to close the property pages.

That’s all it takes. Now the buttons you’ve placed together in a group will act together. When the user clicks one to select it, the others will toggle off (in other words, go back to their unselected position). Button groups can be very useful in a toolbar—any time option buttons would come in handy in a toolbar, just use a button group instead.

Adding Combo Boxes And Other Controls To A Toolbar

The Program Design Department is calling again. That shopping program you’ve written, SuperDuperGroceryStore4U, is nice, but what about listing the available groceries in a combo box in the toolbar. You wonder, how can you do that?

You can add combo boxes or other controls to a toolbar easily; just set aside space in the toolbar by setting a button’s Style property to tbrPlaceholder. Here are the steps to follow to add a combo box to a toolbar:

1.  Right-click the toolbar, and select Properties in the menu that appears.

2.  Click the Buttons tab in the property pages that open, as shown in Figure 15.15.

Figure 15.15  The toolbar property pages.

3.  Insert a new button where you want the combo box to go.

4.  Set the new button’s Style property to tbrPlaceholder in the box labeled Style. This means the button won’t appear—there’ll only be a blank space, and we’ll place our combo box there.

5.  Set the width of the space you want to leave for the combo box by entering a twip (1/1440s of an inch) value in the box labeled Width: (Placeholder), as shown in Figure 15.15.

6.  Close the property pages by clicking on OK.

7.  Click the Combo Box Control tool in the toolbox, and draw a new combo box in the new space in the toolbar.

8.  Add the items you want in the combo box in the Properties window’s List property (or add items to the combo box at runtime).

9.  Connect the code you want to the combo box. For example, here we respond to combo box clicks and text entry by displaying a message box:

Private Sub Combo1_Change()
    MsgBox "You entered " & Combo1.Text
End Sub

Private Sub Combo1_Click()
    MsgBox "You selected " & Combo1.Text
End Sub