Your own image control and App part 23

Y'herd thisun?

“I’m nauseatingly pro-American. It is where great things are possible.”

by Elon Musk

Posted December 01, 2002 12:00AM by Robert Smith

Originally published December 2002 on DoItIn.net using VB7.0/2002. Updated for VB7.1 February 2005

Links for compiled demo versions, all required resources and source code are included at the end of this article.

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23) The toolbar ZoomCombo

We'll need a way to specify the zoom amount and instead of dealing with the annoyance of validating freeform text we'll let the user pick from values in a combo. Add a combobox to our toolbar is a piece of cake but it's a drag that so many controls don't automatically use the XP flat style with flyover color changing.

Rather than jumping through the hoops of COMCTL swapping with a manifest pointing to COMCTL6, I prefer a usercontrol that lets me change all the properties AND that looks flat on any version of Windows. The code for mine is here on Smithvoice.com, it's an old fashioned VB constituent control ported up from VB5 and it works just fine ;-).

Add a new usercontrol named "svFlatDropDownCombo" and paste in the code from that page. Rebuild the project so the usercontrol is available for use and update the AddxxxToolbarButtons subs to stick an instance in between the down and up zoom buttons (note the added labels for spacing):

...

ctl = New Button

ctl.Name = "butZoomMinus"

ctl.Text = "zoom out"

ctl.Width = 23

CType(ctl, Button).FlatStyle = FlatStyle.Popup

CType(ctl, Button).ImageList = ilToolbars

CType(ctl, Button).ImageIndex = ToolbarIconIndexes.ZoomMinus

.Controls.Add(ctl)

'Combobox starts here

'spacers are just labels

ctl = New Label