Sams Teach Yourself Visual Basic 6 in 24 Hours

Sams Teach Yourself Visual Basic 6 in 24 Hours

By Greg Perry

Text Boxes

Text boxes accept user input. Although several other controls accept user input, text boxes are perhaps the easiest to set up and respond to. In addition, a text box is easy for your users to use, and they see text boxes on Windows forms all the time.

TIP

You can set a default value at design time or at runtime so that the user initially sees text in the text box. The user can either change or accept the default text.

Figure 4.7 shows a running application with two text boxes that accept user input.

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Figure 4.7 Two text boxes request user information.

Table 4.3 lists the common properties associated with text boxes. By familiarizing yourself with the properties now, you will be able to produce applications more quickly as you learn more about Visual Basic.

Note

As you are beginning to see, many properties for many controls overlap. Most controls contain Left, Height, Top, and Width properties as well as the Visible property. Therefore, when you learn the properties for one control, you are learning properties for many other controls. When you first began learning Visual Basic just a few hours ago, you may have wondered how you could learn all the properties that go with all the possible Windows controls. You can now see that many controls support the same properties, so learning about the control properties isn't as difficult a task as it might first seem.

CAUTION

The Caption property is the most common property that displays text on a control such as a command button and a label. Text Box controls don't support the Caption property. The Text property holds text for Text Box controls.

Table 4.3. Common text box properties.

Property Description
Alignment Determines whether the text box's text appears left-justified, centered, or right-justified within the text box's boundaries.
BackColor Specifies the text box's background color. Click the BackColor property's palette down arrow to see a list of colors and click System to see a list of common Windows control colors.
BorderStyle Determines whether a single-line border appears around the text box.
Enabled Determines whether the text box is active. Often, you'll change the Enabled property at runtime with code when a text box is no longer needed.
Font Produces a Font dialog box in which you can set the Text property's font name, style, and size.
ForeColor Holds the color of the text box's text.
Height Holds the height of the text box's outline in twips.
Left Holds the number of twips from the text box's left edge to the Form window's left edge.
Locked Determines whether the user can edit the text inside the text box.
MaxLength Specifies the number of characters the user can type into the text box.
MousePointer Determines the shape of the mouse cursor when the user moves the mouse over the text box.
MultiLine Lets the text box hold multiple lines of text or sets the text box to hold only a single line of text. Add scrollbars if you want to put text in a multiline text box so your users can scroll through the text.
PasswordChar Determines the character that appears in the text box when the user enters a password, which keeps prying eyes from knowing what the user enters into a text box.
ScrollBars Determines whether scrollbars appear on the edges of a multiline text box.
TabIndex Specifies the order of the text box in the focus order.
TabStop Determines whether the text box can receive the focus.
Text Holds the value of the text inside the text box. The Text property changes at runtime as the user types text into the text box. If you set an initial Text property value, that value becomes the default value that appears in the text box when the user first sees the text box.
ToolTipText Holds the text that appears as a ToolTip at runtime.
Top Holds the number of twips from the text box's top edge to the Form window's top edge.
Visible Determines whether the text box appears or is hidden from the user.
Width Holds the width of the text box in twips.

TIP

If you are unsure how to use a particular control's property, click the property in the Properties window and press F1 to read the online help. In addition to a detailed help screen that describes the property, such as the one shown in Figure 4.8, many of the help screens also contain an example.

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Figure 4.8 You can press F1 to request help for any selected property.

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