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

The code for this example is located in the progressbar folder on this book’s accompanying CD-ROM.

Adding A Coolbar To A Form

Coolbars were first introduced in the Microsoft Internet Explorer, and they are toolbars that present controls in bands. The user 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.

To add a coolbar control to a form, follow these steps:

1.  Select the Project|Components menu item.

2.  Click the Controls tab in the Components dialog box.

3.  Select the Microsoft Windows Common Controls-3 item, and click on OK to close the Components dialog box. This adds the Coolbar Control tool to the Visual Basic toolbox, as shown in Figure 15.3.

4.  To place a coolbar in your form, just add it as you would any control, using the Coolbar Control tool.

Now that you’ve added a coolbar to your form, maybe you’ll need to align it in that form? See the next topic for the details.

Aligning Coolbars In A Form

Now that you’ve added a coolbar to your form, how do you align it to the top, bottom, or wherever you want to place it? You use the Align property, setting it to one of these values:

•  vbAlignNone—0 (the default)

•  vbAlignTop—1

•  vbAlignBottom—2

•  vbAlignLeft—3

•  vbAlignRight—4

Now that you’ve added a coolbar to your form and set its alignment as you want, how do you add bands to that coolbar? See the next topic for the details.

Adding Bands To A Coolbar

The controls in a coolbar are usually organized into bands (and note that those controls can themselves contain controls, as when you place toolbars in a band). To add a band to a coolbar, just follow these steps:

1.  Right-click the coolbar and select the Properties item in the menu that appears.

2.  Click the Bands tab in the coolbar’s property pages, as shown in Figure 15.26.

Figure 15.26  The coolbar property pages.

3.  Add new bands to the coolbar using the Insert Band button.

4.  When finished, close the property pages by clicking on OK.

You can also add a band to a coolbar at runtime with its Bands collection, because that collection supports the usual collection methods Add and Remove. For example, here’s how we add a new band to a coolbar at runtime:

Private Sub Command1_Click()
    Dim band5 As Band
    Set band5 = CoolBar1.Bands.Add()
End Sub

Now that you’ve added bands to a coolbar, how do you install controls in those bands? Take a look at the next topic to get the details.

Adding Controls To Coolbar Bands

You add controls to coolbar bands by setting the band’s Child property. The Child property can only hold one child control, which you might think limits the power of coolbars, but in fact, that control can be a complete toolbar. If you fill a coolbar’s bands with toolbar controls, users can arrange and slide those toolbars around as they like.

To add a control to a coolbar band, follow these steps:

1.  Add the control (such as a toolbar) you want to place in a band to the coolbar by drawing it inside the coolbar.

2.  Right-click the coolbar and select the Properties item in the menu that appears.

3.  Click the Bands tab in the coolbar’s property pages, as shown in Figure 15.27.

Figure 15.27  Adding a toolbar to a coolbar band.

4.  Select the band you want to work with.

5.  Set the band’s Child property to the control you want to add to that band, such as Toolbar1 in Figure 15.27.

6.  Close the coolbar’s property pages by clicking on OK.

You can also set a band’s Child property at runtime, as in this example where we set the control in the coolbar’s first band to Toolbar1:

Private Sub Command1_Click()
    Set CoolBar1.Bands(1).Child = Toolbar1
End Sub

Handling Coolbar Control Events

You’ve set up the coolbar you want and placed a few toolbars in the various bands of that coolbar. Now how do you handle button clicks in those toolbars (or other controls you’ve place in a coolbar’s bands)?

Handling events from controls in coolbar bands is easy—just connect event handlers to those controls as you normally would (in other words, if they weren’t in a coolbar). Here’s an example where we’ve added a toolbar, Toolbar1, to a coolbar. You can add buttons to the toolbar as you would normally—just open the toolbar’s property pages and use the Insert Button button. To handle Click events for those button, you just double-click the toolbar’s buttons at design time, which opens the matching Click event handler:

Private Sub Toolbar1_ButtonClick(ByVal Button As ComctlLib.Button)

End Sub

Then you just proceed as you would in a normal toolbar, such as adding this code where we indicate to users which button they’ve clicked:

Private Sub Toolbar1_ButtonClick(ByVal Button As ComctlLib.Button)
    MsgBox "You clicked button " & Button.Index

End Sub