HOWTO: Add an About Box to an ActiveX Control (UserControl)

• Control Creation, Professional, and Enterprise Editions of Microsoft Visual Basic, 16-bit and 32-bit, for Windows, version 5.0

SUMMARY

An ActiveX control typically exposes an About property to allow developers to see extra information concerning the author of the control. Microsoft Visual Basic Control Creation, Professional, and Enterprise Editions for Windows, version 5.0 allow the creation of this About property for ActiveX controls (UserControls) created in these editions of Visual Basic 5.0.

MORE INFORMATION

Step-by-Step Example

1. Open your ActiveX Control project or start a new ActiveX Control project.

2. In the Project window, right-click your ActiveX control (UserControl) object. Click Add, and then click Form.

3. In the Professional and Enterprise Editions, double-click "About Dialog" in the list of form templates. In the Control Creation Edition, there is no "About Dialog" form template. Use the following steps instead:

   a. Double-click "Form" in the list of form templates.

   b. Change the Name of the form to "frmAbout" and the Caption to "About

         MyApp," where MyApp is the name of your application.
   

   c. Add a CommandButton control to the form and change its Caption to

         "OK" and its Default property to "True".
   

   d. Add the following code to the CommandButton control's Click event

         procedure:
   

         Private Sub Command1_Click()
            Unload Me
         End Sub
   
      e. Add other controls to the form to give it the appearance you desire.
         Label controls with the application's title, version, description,
         and disclaimers are common, as is a PictureBox control for
         displaying the application's icon and a CommandButton control for
         displaying "System Information."
   
   

4. In the Project window, right-click your ActiveX control (UserControl) object. Click View Code and add the following code to your ActiveX control (UserControl):

         Sub ShowAboutBox()
            frmAbout.Show vbModal
            Unload frmAbout
            Set frmAbout = Nothing
         End Sub
   
   

5. From the Tools menu, click Procedure Attributes.

6. Select the ShowAboutBox procedure in the Name field, and then click "Advanced>>."

7. Select AboutBox from the Procedure ID field and click OK.

8. Close all of the windows for the ActiveX control (UserControl) project. This will put the control in run mode.

9. Add a "Standard EXE" project (using Add Project in the File menu) and place the ActiveX control (UserControl) on the form. The About property is shown in the control's property list. If you click on the ellipses for this property, the frmAbout dialog box appears.

REFERENCES

Microsoft Visual Basic Books Online: "Component Tools Guide," "Creating ActiveX Components," "Building ActiveX Controls," "Visual Basic ActiveX Control Features," "Adding an AboutBox to Your Control"