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Controls.md

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title Controls
parent Reference Section
nav_order 7
permalink /tB/Controls

Controls

The standard set of UI control classes that ship with twinBASIC lives in the VB built-in package --- see VB Package for the package landing page. The classes below are grouped by purpose; each entry links to the per-class reference.

Forms and host classes

These classes are containers rather than controls in the strict sense --- they host other controls and back the form/control designer in the IDE.

  • Form -- top-level window hosting controls, menus, and a drawing surface.
  • MDIForm -- top-level MDI parent that hosts MDI-child Form instances inside a recessed client area.
  • UserControl -- base class for designing a reusable ActiveX control in twinBASIC.
  • PropertyPage -- container backing a single tab of a COM property-page dialog (the (Custom) popup on an ActiveX control's property browser).
  • Report -- top-level window specialised for banded report layout, print preview, and printing.

Buttons and toggles

  • CommandButton -- push-button used to trigger an action.
  • CheckBox -- two- or three-state check box with an optional text caption.
  • CheckMark -- windowless check glyph that scales to fill its rectangle; no caption, no focus.
  • OptionButton -- radio-button; option buttons sharing a container form a mutually-exclusive group.

Text and value input

  • TextBox -- single-line or multi-line edit control, with optional password masking and digit-only input.
  • ComboBox -- edit field combined with a drop-down list of items.
  • ListBox -- vertically-scrolling list of items, optionally multi-column and multi-select.
  • HScrollBar -- stand-alone horizontal scroll bar.
  • VScrollBar -- stand-alone vertical scroll bar.

File-system browsing

These three controls are normally connected together to build a complete file picker.

  • DriveListBox --- drive picker. Not yet documented.
  • DirListBox -- directory-tree picker for a single path.
  • FileListBox -- file list for a single directory, filtered by wildcard and file-attribute toggles.

Containers

  • Frame -- captioned container that groups related controls and scopes OptionButton groups.
  • MultiFrame -- layout container that arranges a set of Frame controls in a horizontal or vertical strip.
  • PictureBox -- Win32 native control combining picture display, a drawing surface, and a child-control container.

Display-only

  • Label -- windowless lightweight read-only text display, used for captions, status text, and keyboard mnemonics.
  • Image -- windowless lightweight picture display; the small, efficient alternative to PictureBox.
  • Line -- windowless single straight line between two endpoints.
  • Shape -- windowless geometric primitive (rectangle, oval, circle, star, arrow, …) with configurable border, fill, and rotation.
  • QRCode -- windowless QR-code renderer populated from a text or byte-array payload.

Menus

  • Menu -- item in a Win32 native menu --- top-level entry on a Form's or MDIForm's menu bar, a drop-down entry, or a separator.

Data and external content

  • Data -- Win32 native control that opens a DAO recordset and exposes record-navigation buttons for bound controls.
  • OLE -- OLE container hosting a linked or embedded OLE Automation object (Word document, Excel sheet, …).
  • Timer -- non-visual control that raises a periodic event at a programmable interval.