Visual Basic 4 in 12 Easy Lessons vel4xc.htm

Appendix C

Toolbox Control Summary

If you were to add every control from your Visual Basic Working Model CD-ROM, your Toolbox window would be very complete indeed. Throughout this book, you learned how to use the majority of Visual Basic's controls. Most of the controls described throughout this book are the standard Visual Basic controls that most Visual Basic applications require.

Some controls that come with the Visual Basic Working Model, however, were designed for specific purposes that are not as common as other controls. These are often called custom controls. The more controls your application's Toolbox window contains, the larger (and somewhat slower) your application will be. Therefore, don't add more controls to your toolbox than your application needs to do its job.

This Appendix Cescribes the custom controls that you can add to your Toolbox window. Although this book does not cover every control listed due to their specific nature, you should have little trouble implementing them now that you are familiar with the controls taught throughout this book. Read through the available controls so you'll know what is available. When you need a control and the control does not appear on your toolbox, load that control's .OCX file to install that custom control in your application.

Perform these steps to load a custom control file:

Press Ctrl+T to display the Custom Controls dialog box.
Click the Browse button and locate the Windows System folder if the folder is not already selected.
Locate the .OCX custom control file that contains the control you want. The following table lists the file required by each control described in the table.
As you select .OCX files, Visual Basic lists the custom control files by their title in the Custom Control dialog box.
Click the OK button. Your Toolbox window will expand to show the custom controls you added.

If Table C.1 does not contain a control that you see on your Toolbox, that control is a standard control that you cannot remove or add. This book covered all of the standard controls with the exception of the advanced OLE control. As Lesson 11 explained, the common dialog box control is a custom control as well but Table C.1 does not address the custom control because of its coverage in Lesson 11. In addition, Table C.1 does not cover the grid control due to Lesson 12's coverage of the grid control.

Note: If you want to remove from your toolbox custom controls that you don't need for your current application, press Ctrl+T and uncheck the controls you don't want to use.

Tip: You can purchase additional controls from several software vendors as well as find many custom controls on the Internet, BBS systems, and other online services.

Table C.1. Visual Basic working model's control reference.

Custom Control Icon	Custom Control Filename	Control Description
	DBGRID32.OCX	A database-bound grid control that updates along with your database values.
	ANIBTN32.OCX	An animated command button that displays animated graphics on command buttons.
	GAUGE32.OCX	A moving control that displays movement or percentage covered as your program completes a process.
	KEYSTA32.OCX	A control that sets several keyboard states such as CapsLock and ScrollLock.
	MSCOMM32.OCX	A communications control that lets your applications communicate with the modem.
	DBLIST32.OCX	Two controls that provide different list views of database data.
	MSMAPI32.OCX	Two control that provide MAPI (Messaging Application Program Interface) functions that support advanced mail and voice messaging features.
	MSMASK32.OCX	A control for masking (editing) a user's input so that the input follows a preset format, such as a telephone number with area code.
	MCI32.OCX	A control that displays VCR-like controls you can use to play multimedia video or sound clips.
	MSOUTL32.OCX	A control that produces an outline of data that your application's user can expand or collapse for more or less detail.
	PICCLP32.OCX	A control that displays bitmaps and portions of bitmap images.
	RICHTX32.OCX	A control that you can use to manage RTF (Rich Text Format) text.
	COMCTL32.OCX	A set of controls with which you install Windows 95-like controls, such as an customizable toolbar, tabbed property sheets, list view control, and a slider control.
	SPIN32.OCX	Increments or decrements values, as a user clicks the spin control's arrows, to let the user adjust values inside a text box or a label.
	GRAPH32.OCX	Creates and manages graphs inside your application.
	THREED32.OCX	A set of controls that produce three-dimensional physical effects that mimic the standard controls (such as the command button).
	TABCTL32.OCX	An additional non-Microsoft tabbed property sheet control.