ButtonControls Documentation

1.4.3.114

Introduction

ButtonControls is a collection of ActiveX controls that wrap the Button window class. It is optimized for Visual Basic 6.0, but should also work in any other environment that supports COM controls.

Basics

The controls superclass the native button window class of Windows: Button. Although I tried to wrap all features of this window class (status: Windows 7), some things may be missing. In these cases you usually may use the Win32 API and handle the controls as native button windows. One of my goals was it to create button controls that may be controlled via API as well as via the classes that I implemented.

Requirements

ButtonControls Unicode runs on the following operating systems:

• Windows 2000 (SP4 or later)
• Windows XP (SP3 or later)
• Windows Server 2003 (SP2 or later)
• Windows Vista (SP2 or later)
• Windows Server 2008
• Windows 7
• Systems supported by Wine (Wine is a Win32 subsystem for alternative operating systems) - limited support
• ReactOS (a free Windows 2000 clone) - limited support

Some features have additional requirements which are mentioned in the affected feature's documentation.
Limited support means, that I won't invest much work to support those systems. If a feature works on a system marked with "limited support" - fine; if it does not and it's easy to fix, I'll fix it, but if it's difficult to fix, I probably won't fix it. Also I will test the control much less on those systems.

Support

Although there's no entitlement to support, you've good chances to get help if you either post to the forums or send me a mail.
Bugs and feature requests should be entered into the bug tracking system.

ButtonControls License

         ButtonControls
         ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
         License for use and distribution
         ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

         ButtonControls Copyright (C) 2006-2010 Timo Kunze

         This library comes for free. You can redistribute it, but
         not modify it. If you use this library in your program,
         it would be nice (but isn't necessary) to mention its
         author Timo Kunze together with a link to his website
         http://www.timosoft-software.de in your software's
         About dialog.

         This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
         but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
         MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
    

Acknowledgements

Thanks go to:

• Wine Headquarters, because Wine helped me a lot on understanding how Windows is working.
• Microsoft, for ATL, WTL and Visual Studio - great libraries and a great IDE
• Geoff Chappell, for his website about undocumented Win32 API stuff.
• Igor Tandetnik, for his great help on learning ATL and WTL
• Dimitri van Heesch, for Doxygen
• Nikos Bozinis, for his awesome help with the Vista drag'n'drop stuff.
• Christian Lütgens, for his great work as beta-tester and for his help when I needed a 2nd opinion on some decisions.
• All donators
• For great music: Amon Amarth, Sirenia, Tristania (with Vibeke), Nightwish (with Tarja), Delain, Lacuna Coil, Battlelore, Within Temptation, Elis, Viikate, Dimmu Borgir, System of a Down, Guns N' Roses

FAQ

1. Why is the Font property ignored?
It isn't. My controls have a property UseSystemFont which defaults to True. This property tells the control to use the system font rather than the font set by the Font property.
Why is this property's default True? Well, if I set system wide settings (like fonts) I expect all applications to follow them. Unfortunately ignoring system wide settings seems to be trendy, so see my decision as an educational measure.

2. Why is event xyz not fired?
Firing an event is relative time-consuming, even if the event isn't handled by the application at all. Therefore I implemented a DisabledEvents property which can be used to deactivate certain events.
By default many events are deactivated.