Visual C++ 6 Unleashed

By MICKEY WILLIAMS and David Bennett

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • About the Authors
  • About the Contributors
  • Acknowledgments
  • Tell Us What You Think!
  • Introduction
  • How to Use This Book
  • What You Need to Use This Book
  • What's New in Visual C++ 6.0
  • Contacting the Main Author
  • Part I: Introduction
  • Chapter 1. The Visual C++ 6.0 Environment
  • Part II: MFC Programming
  • Chapter 2. MFC Class Library Overview
  • Chapter 3. MFC Message Handling Mechanism
  • Chapter 4. The Document View Architecture
  • Chapter 5. Creating and Using Dialog Boxes
  • Chapter 6. Working with Device Contexts and GDI Objects
  • Chapter 7. Creating and Using Property Sheets
    • Understanding Property Sheets
    • Creating a Property Sheet
    • Responding to Property Sheet Messages
    • Customizing the Standard Property Sheet
    • Understanding the Win32 Sequence of Events
    • Summary
  • Chapter 8. Working with the File System
  • Chapter 9. Using Serialization with File and Archive Objects
  • Part III: Internet Programming with MFC
  • Chapter 10. MFC and the Internet Server API (ISAPI)
  • Chapter 11. The WinInet API
  • Chapter 12. MFC HTML Support
  • Part IV: Advanced Programming Topics
  • Chapter 13. Using the Standard C++ Library
  • Chapter 14. Error Detection and Exception Handling Techniques
  • Chapter 15. Debugging and Profiling Strategies
  • Chapter 16. Multithreading
  • Chapter 17. Using Scripting and Other Tools to Automate the Visual C++ IDE
  • Part V: Database Programming
  • Chapter 18. Creating Custom AppWizards
  • Chapter 19. Database Overview
  • Chapter 20. ODBC Programming
  • Chapter 21. MFC Database Classes
  • Chapter 22. Using OLE DB
  • Chapter 23. Programming with ADO
  • Part VI: MFC Support for COM and ActiveX
  • Chapter 24. Overview of COM and Active Technologies
  • Chapter 25. Active Documents
  • Chapter 26. Active Containers
  • Chapter 27. Active Servers
  • Chapter 28. ActiveX Controls
  • Part VII: Using the Active Template Library
  • Chapter 29. ATL Architecture
  • Chapter 30. Creating COM Objects Using ATL
  • Chapter 31. Creating ActiveX Controls Using ATL
  • Chapter 32. Using ATL to Create MTS and COM+ Components
  • Part VIII: Finishing Touches
  • Chapter 33. Adding Windows Help
  • Part IX: Appendix

Understanding Property Sheets

From a coding perspective, you should think of a property sheet as a collection of individual modeless dialog boxes (representing each page) held inside a larger modal dialog box.

The property sheet itself is implemented down at Win32 level as a dialog box that contains a tab control (one of the common controls) and a set of controlling buttons, such as OK, Cancel, Apply, and Help. The tab control handles the individual dialog boxes that make up the property sheet pages.

Fortunately the MFC wrapper classes CPropertySheet and CPropertyPage greatly simplify the creation and operation of a property sheet and its property pages. Visual C++ 6 introduces support for the new Wizard97 style (only supported on NT 5 and Windows 98), which extends standard property sheet classes with the new CPropertySheetEx and CPropertyPageEx classes. The Wizard97 style specifies new design elements for wizard pages, such as areas for header sections. Information on the Wizard97 specification can be found in the MSDN online help, in the section titled, "Wizard 97". Note that there is a space in the title between Wizard and 97. The documentation from Microsoft is inconsistent in some places, but the true name of the specification appears to be Wizard97 (no spaces), most of the time.

There are two main modes of operation for property sheets. The usual mode lets users select between the various pages via the familiar tab control at the top of the property sheet. Users can implement the changes while keeping the sheet open by clicking the Apply button; or they can click OK or Cancel to end the property sheet in the same way as a modeless dialog box.

Another mode is the Wizard style, where users navigate from the start of a sequence of pages to the end using Next and Back buttons. When they reach the end of the sequence, they can implement the changes they've specified by clicking Finish or cancel them by clicking Cancel at any point in the sequence.

The rest of this chapter discusses how you can implement property sheets for both these modes via the MFC wrapper classes.

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