InformIT: Visual C++ 6 Unleashed

Table of Contents

Summary

In this chapter, you learned how to build sophisticated tabbed property sheets that let you group and present dialog box templates as individual selectable pages.

Property sheets are an invaluable tool for developers who want to build an easy-to-use but complex user interface. These sheets let you hide and package many of the controls that might otherwise overwhelm users if all the controls were presented on a single dialog box.

You can dynamically add or remove property pages to further customize the property sheet presentation and share common pages while presenting other, more specialized pages when applicable. The Visual Studio Dialog Editor makes good use of this technique; the control properties property sheet shows the same General and Extended Styles pages for all controls, but the Styles page is more specific to the type of control being edited.

You should use the various property sheet messages to control page selection and perform tasks such as validation before allowing users to move off the current page. You can let users apply their changes to your application to provide instant feedback on the impact of those changes without losing the interface, so that they can revert to the old settings or make changes if needed.

Modeless property sheets let you keep the pages displayed while users interact with other parts of your application's user interface. This can give users an extra control mechanism or a feedback mechanism to provide detailed information about the objects they click on and interrogate.

You can use the wizard form of a property sheet to help guide users through a series of forms and required fields when trying to configure parts of an application or install various software components.

The new Wizard97 background and header bitmaps let you present a better-looking interface with clearer titles and subtitles on each of the pages.

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