Dewsoft Frontpage Tutorials

Lesson -6:Building a Complete Application: ShowString
6.3 - Building the ShowString Dialog Boxes
This section builds on that background. ShowString is going to have two custom dialog boxes: one brought up by Tools, Options and also an About dialog box. An About dialog box has been provided by AppWizard, but it needs to be changed a little; you build the Options dialog box from scratch. FIG. 6.6 Keyboard accelerators are connected to resource IDs. 6.3.1 ShowString’s About Dialog Box Figure 6.7 shows the About dialog box that AppWizard makes for you; it contains the application name and the current year. To view the About dialog box for ShowString, click the ResourceView tab in the project workspace window, expand the Dialogs list by clicking the + icon next to the word Dialogs, and then double-click IDD_ABOUTBOX to bring up the About dialog box resource. FIG. 6.7 AppWizard makes an About dialog box for you. You might want to add a company name to your About dialog box. Here’s how to add Dewsoft Overseas, as an example. Click the line of text that reads Copyright© 1998, and it will be surrounded by a selection box. Bring up the Properties dialog box, if it isn’t up. Edit the caption to add Dewsoft Overseas at the end; the changes are reflected immediately in the dialog box. TIP: If the rulers you see in Figure 6.7 don’t appear when you open IDD_ABOUTBOX in Developer Studio, you can turn them on by choosing Layout, Guide Settings and then selecting the Rulers and Guides radio button in the top half of the Guide Settings dialog box. 6.3.2 ShowString’s Options Dialog Box The Options dialog box is simple to build. First, make a new dialog box by choosing Insert, Resource and then double-clicking Dialog. An empty dialog box called Dialog1 appears, with an OK button and a Cancel button, as shown in Figure 6.8. FIG. 6.8 A new dialog box always has OK and Cancel buttons. Next, follow these steps to convert the empty dialog box into the Options dialog box: 1. Change the ID to IDD_OPTIONS and the caption to Options. 2. In the floating toolbar called Controls, click the button labeled ab\| to get an edit box in which the user can enter the new value for the string. Click inside the dialog box to place the control and then change the ID to IDC_OPTIONS_STRING. (Control IDs should all start with IDC and then mention the name of their dialog box and an identifier that is unique to that dialog box.) 3. Drag the sizing squares to resize the edit box as wide as possible. 4. Add a static label above the edit box and change that caption to String:. You will revisit this dialog box later, when adding the appearance capabilities, but for now it’s ready to be connected. It will look like Figure 6.9. FIG. 6.9 The Options dialog box is the place to change the string.

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