Customizing Common Dialog Boxes

You can use the common dialog boxes in their standard form, or you can customize them. From the user's perspective, the chief benefit of the common dialog box is its consistent appearance and functionality from application to application. Therefore, it is important that you customize a common dialog box only when it is absolutely necessary for an application. Otherwise, the consistent appearance and simple coding interface are lost. Appropriate customizations leave intact as many of the original controls as possible. Increasing the size of the dialog box or adding new controls in the space already available in the dialog box is an appropriate customization. Hiding original controls or otherwise changing the intended functionality of the original controls is a less appropriate customization.

This section discusses the following methods for customizing a common dialog box:

• Providing a custom dialog template that defines additional controls or modifies the standard controls
• Creating a hook procedure to monitor and filter messages sent to the dialog box procedure
• Using registered messages to receive or send information to the dialog box
• Providing help support for a common dialog box