Is there a method such that a user can click on the form itself, and in doing so remove focus from whatever object (textbox, combobox, etc) currently has it? Basically, can focus be uniformly removed from everything at once?
Setting the focus to the form itself does not work.
I thought about doing the old "hide a placeholder button behind another object" trick, but I'm really not a fan of that.
Thanks!
In VB6 a PictureBox can get focus, even if it does not contain any control.
In your case you can put a PictureBox with TabStop false, BorderStyle set to 0, TabIndex set to 0 behind every other control but not containing any focusable control and stretch it to ScaleWidth by ScaleHeight at run-time.
You have to put the labels and any windowless control in this background PictureBox too.
This way when the user clicks "on the form" the focus will "go away". With "no focus" Tab key will focus first control (the one with TabIndex set to 1).
When a form is active, something generally HAS to have focus. It sounds like you're just wanting to not "show" that a particular control has focus.
If that's the case, it's going to depend on the controls. Some have properties that control whether or not the specific control "indicates" its focus in some way.
But the built in Windows controls will always show their focus state unless you subclass them
Given this problem. I'd probably put a button on the form , then move it offscreen when the form loads. Make sure it's not a tab stop, but then when you want to hide focus, set focus specifically to the button, make sure the button is STILL in the tab order, even though it's not a tab stop, so the user can press tab while on the button and end up somewhere logical.
Don't have VB handy, but could you simply remove TabStop?
for x = 1 to me.Controls.count
me.Controls(x).TabStop = 0
next
I have a picturebox and a control on a form.
Private Sub cmdButton_Click
PictureBox.setFocus
Exit sub
End sub
The control doesn't change its appearance, nor does the picturebox.
Of course you'll need to add an If-Then clause if you want the control to respond normally sometimes.
Related
Is it possible to put a picturebox over a flowlayoutpanel without it being affected by the flow?
Yes. You simply have to make sure that it's parent is the form rather then the FLP. If you drag the PictureBox in the designer then you'll probably end up dropping in on the FLP. Instead, add it to the form and then set the Location property manually to move it. You can then manipulate the z-order in the Document Outline window if necessary to make sure the PictureBox is in front, or you can just right-click one of the controls and select "Send to Back" or "Bring to Front".
I am very new beginner with VB6 and I hope I explain the things right
I want to create form with 2 buttons (the buttons are located on the top form position )
So each button will switch to other form/window/frame
For example
The first button will show window 1 (there I can set only parameters)
The second button will show window 2 (there I can set only IP address)
Please advice if we can do that by VB6 ?
And if yes how to do that ( step by step )
Remark - Similar example but with multiple windows in the same form is the system properties ( right click on my computer and properties ) , the we can see each button will view different window
Create a form with 2 buttons, Command1 and Command2.
On this form, create 2 frames, Frame1 and Frame2. hide Frame2 and make sure to line up both framesso that they are of the same size and located right on top of each other (Top, Left, Width and Height properties must be the same)
Now put this code in:
Private Sub Command1_Click()
Frame1.Visible = True
Frame2.Visible = False
End Sub
Private Sub Command2_Click()
Frame1.Visible = False
Frame2.Visible = True
End Sub
Now each the first button shows the first frame while hiding the 2nd. The second button hides the first frame and shows the seconds. I think this is the simplest way to implement your task.
PS: don't forget to name your objects properly, it's not a good idea to have default names like Command1 or Frame2 - should be more descriptive than that.
It sounds like you are asking about the tabbed dialog control. To use a tabbed dialog control in VB6:
Click Project -> Components
Scroll down to "Microsoft Tabbed Dialog Control 6.0" and select it.
Click the Apply button.
You should notice a new control in the component tool box. If you do not see the toolbox, click View -> ToolBox. This is the same area of the IDE where you first click to add a button to a form. The tabbed dialog control looks like the top tab of several file folders. When you hover your mouse over the control in the toolbox, you will see a tool tip text of "SSTab". Click this control and then draw a rectangle on your form.
By default, this will add a tabbed dialog control with 3 tabs, but you can change this in the properties window. You can now create any control on top of a tab of the tabbed dialog control and interact with the control exactly the same way you would if the control was placed on the form itself.
What you want is called an MDI Form. It's a form that contains other forms.
You can find a full tutorial on them here, but here's the gist of what you want to do:
Set the "MDIChild" property of all your subforms you want to use to True. Disable their minimize, maximize, and resize functions as well.
Create an MDIForm. Disable its AutoShowChildren property.
Add a toolbar to the MDIForm. Add buttons to the toolbar corresponding to the forms you'll be switching between.
Implement each button's click event, to create child form as expected (or switch to an existing one).
I have a semi-transparent form (using AlphaBlend) that acts as an overlay. For the user to still be able to interact with the window below I have set WS_EX_NOACTIVATE on my form so all right and left clicks go through to the other window.
However I have a few clickable labels on my form. Clicking those and performing the appropriate action works fine since despite the WS_EX_NOACTIVATE flag the OnClick methods are called, but the click will (obviousely) also propagate to the other window, which I do not want in this case.
So, does anyone know how to "stop" the click being sent through to the window below in case I already handled it in my form ? Basically I would like being able to chose whether the click "belongs to me" and does not get propagated or whether the window below mine receives it.
As Rob explained, WS_EX_NOACTIVATE is not relevant here. Most likely you used WS_EX_TRANSPARENT and that made your window transparent to mouse clicks.
To get finer grained control of mouse click transparency, handle the WM_NCHITTEST message in your top level window. Return HTTRANSPARENT for regions that you want to be "click through". Otherwise return, for example, HTCLIENT.
Wm_ex_NoActivate should be irrelevant here. That just controls whether your window receives the input focus. Indeed, if you start with a scratch program and do nothing but change the extended window style, you'll see that when you click within the bounds of that program's window, the clicks are handled in the usual way, except that the window is never activated; programs behind that window do not receive any click events.
Therefore, to make your label controls eat click events instead of forwarding them to the windows behind them, you need to find out what you did to make them start forwarding those messages and simply stop doing that, whatever that is.
Does anyone know why Labels and Frames (and possibly other controls) have a TabIndex property in VB6? Is there some use for it; some feature of GUI programming I ought to be incorporating in my applications (that I am blissfully unaware of)?
To confirm what Cody said in the comments. The VB6 manual entry for TabIndex says:
Controls that can't receive the focus (Frame and Label controls) remain in the tab order but are skipped during tabbing.
but
If you press the access key for a Frame or Label control, the focus moves to the next control in the tab order that can receive the focus.
TabIndex is the property used to determine the sequence of focused controls when user presses TAB key.
If control with TabIndex=5 is focused and user presses TAB, control with TabIndex=6 will take focus.
GUI: should a button represent the current state or the state to be achieved through clicking the button?
I've seen both and it sometimes misleads the user. what do you think?
The label on the button should reflect what the button does, i.e. it should describe the change the button makes.
For example, if you have a call logging system a button should say "Close Call" and the user can click it to close the call. The button should not have the label "Call is Open" and the user clicks to change the call status as that's very counter-intuitive, since the button is effectively doing the opposite to what it says on it.
In my opinion the label - and so the function - of a button should rarely, if ever, change. A button is supposed to be a like a physical button and they usually only do a single thing. (There are a few exceptions like play-pause on a media player where it's OK for the button label/icon to change, but at least this is copying a button from a real physical device.)
To carry on the example from above, I would say usually you would want two buttons, "Open Call" and "Close Call" and disable whichever one is not appropriate. Ideally you'd have a field elsewhere displaying the status of the call.
In summary, buttons are for doing things not for passing on information to the user.
The button should represent the action to be executed, not the state.
Some buttons are actions and are not ambiguous, like "Save", "Print" or "Enable user".
When a button represents a state that can be toggled, like Enable and Disable something, I do one of the following:
Change the button text, and make it always point to the state that will be achieved; (i.e. make the button point to actions, not states);
- Keep the button's text the same, but use one of those sticky buttons that will stay pressed, representing that the current state is "on" or "off". I prefer the former approach, though.
It should represent the action taken when clicking the button. States should always be presented by other means.
But I know what you mean. My car radio has buttons with text that shows the current state. It is really confusing.
This depends on the function which will be triggerd by the button click.
if the click changes the state of an entity i would suggest that the button represents the state the entity will enter after clicking the button
if the click triggers some kind of functionality the button should represent the function.
The appearance of the button is also a clue to its state. It should follow the standards of the environment if any exist (example, beveled edge / shadow appears on mouse click in Windows).