Sams Teach Yourself Visual Basic 6 in 24 Hours

By Greg Perry

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • About the Author
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction
  • Who Should Read This Book
  • What This Book Will Do for You
  • Can This Book Really Teach Visual Basic in 24 Hours?
  • What You Need
  • Files on the Visual Basic Distribution CD-ROM
  • Conventions Used in This Book
  • Enough! Time Is Ticking!
  • Part I: Introducing Visual Basic
  • Hour 1. Visual Basic at Work
  • Hour 2.Analyzing Visual Basic Programs
  • Hour 3.Controls and Properties
  • Hour 4.Examining Labels, Buttons, and Text Boxes
  • Part II: Coding the Details
  • Hour 5.Putting Code into Visual Basic
  • Hour 6.Message and Input Boxes
  • Hour 7.Making Decisions
  • Hour 8.Visual Basic Looping
  • Part III:Putting Code to Work
  • Hour 9.Combining Code and Controls
  • Hour 10.List Boxes and Data Lists
  • Hour 11.Additional Controls
  • Hour 12.Dialog Box Basics
    • What the Common Dialog Box Does
    • Adding the Common Dialog Box Control
    • Generating Common Dialog Boxes
    • The Common Dialog Box Methods
    • Adding the File Dialog Boxes
    • The Color Dialog Box
    • The Font Dialog Box
    • The Printer Dialog Box
    • Summary
    • Q&A
    • Workshop
  • Part IV:Programming with Data
  • Hour 13.Modular Programming
  • Hour 14.Built-In Functions Save Time
  • Hour 15.Visual Basic Database Basics
  • Hour 16.Printing with Visual Basic
  • Part V:Sprucing Up Programs
  • Hour 17.Menus and Visual Basic
  • Hour 18.The Graphic Image Controls
  • Hour 19.Toolbars and More Graphics
  • Hour 20.Writing Correct Applications
  • Part VI:Advancing Visual Basic Applications
  • Hour 21.Visual Basic and ActiveX
  • Hour 22.Object Basics
  • Hour 23.Distributing Your Applications
  • Hour 24.Online Visual Basic
  • Part VII:Appendixes
  • Appendix A.Operator Precedence
  • Appendix B.Answers
  • Appendix C.Using the CD-ROM

Generating Common Dialog Boxes

When you add a Common Dialog Box control to your toolbox and then double-click the control to add a dialog box to your Form window, Visual Basic offers an extra Properties window property, Custom, that can be used to set multiple properties. This special Property Pages dialog box is reached by right-clicking the Common Dialog Box icon and selecting Properties.

Figure 12.9 shows the tabbed Property Pages dialog box that appears when you click the Custom property. You'll see tabs across the top that display properties sheets for Open/Save As, Color, Font, Print, and Help dialog boxes. The properties sheets don't offer all properties, but they do simplify entering the most common properties for each kind of dialog box.

Figure 12.9 The Custom property makes entering design-time common dialog box properties simple.

You use the Custom properties sheets to set as many properties at design time as you can. Your code can set the rest. For example, if you prefer to display text using the Arial font that appears on most Windows systems, you can type Arial in the Custom Font properties sheet for the FontName property. When the user runs the application and displays the Font dialog box, Arial will be selected. Of course, the user might change the selection, and if Arial doesn't exist on the user's system, the Font dialog box may make a different font the default font. Therefore, your code must check the dialog box's FontName property when the dialog box returns control to your application to see if the user selected a different font.

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