Contents: Main
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Make a '97 Style Toolbar You may have noticed that the newer Microsoft products have those special toolbars, that highlight when there is a mouse over event. In VB 3 & 4 there is no control for this, so here's how to do it. This is moderately hard to understand whats going on, but very easy to implement...so what's stopping you
Here's
how you create the picture you see: Now
insert another PictureBox in the other PictureBox. Set
the following properties:
The only thing we don't have included yet are the two lines. In order to place them directly against each other you will have to uncheck the "Align Controls to Grid" option from the Tools|Options menu. Now you can simply draw two lines in the big PictureBox and arrange them correctly. The colors are: &H80000010& for the dark (left) one, and &H80000014& for the light (right) one. After this it is better to check the "Align Controls to Grid" option again. Before
I start listing the Source Code, let's see if we can
think of what we need. First of all the 3D-effects of the
button should become visible if you move the mousecursor
over them, and it should be invisible if you move the
mouse away from it. I will start giving you the code for making the 3D-effect visible. You can copy it and paste it into the Declarations Section of your form. Private
Sub MoveMouse(ByVal bIndex As Byte) The Hexadecimal codes for the colors are special codes for the "Button Highlight", "Button Shadow" and "Active Border" colors. Some of the variables aren't declared yet, so put the following lines in the declarations section of your form: Private OldIndex As Byte If you carefully read the code some times you will understand what's happening. The main event is the drawing of the lines, and the removing of the old ones. I will now give you the other two subs required for the project. Just paste them into the declarations section. Private
Sub DownMouse(ByVal bIndex As Byte) Private
Sub UpMouse(ByVal bIndex As Byte) We now have created the visible part and the Source Code, but still nothing works! This is because the functions (subs) are never called. This is the last thing we need to do, and it is also the easiest part. Just follow the instructions below: Add
to Form_Load: Add
to Form_MouseMove: Add
to Picture1_DblClick: Add
to Picture1_MouseDown: Add
to Picture1_MouseMove: Add
to Picture1_MouseUp: Select
Case
Index Add
to Picture2_MouseMove: Well, we are almost finished now. But the BorderStyle properties of all the PictureBoxes are still on "1 - Fixed Single". You can now change them all into "0 - None". That looks much better!
This is what the finished thing should look like. |
The picure shows six
PictureBoxes and two Lines. The Appearace property of
each PictureBox is set to "0 - Flat". The
Border around the pictures is set to "1 - Fixed
Single" to show you the size of the pictures. This
property will be set to "0 - none" in the end.
The big black square where all the PictureBoxes and Lines
are in is also a Picture Box. In order to get pictures,
use the Capture option of programs like Paint Shop Pro.
Make sure that the size of the pictures is 16 x 16 pixels
with 16 colors.
On this picture you will see how
it should look like. Press the right mousebutton on
Picture1, so that it is selected and a popup menu
appears. Select Copy in this menu. Now press the right
mousebutton on Picture2. Select Paste and respond with
"Yes" to
the question if you want to make a control array. Do this
four times, so that there will be five little pictures in
the big PictureBox. Arrange them just like in the picture
at the top of this page and choose for each individual
PictureBox a nice picture (except for the big one of
course!).