BUG: Control Unexpectedly Gains Focus When Made Visible

• Microsoft Visual Basic Learning, Professional, and Enterprise Editions for Windows, version 5.0

SYMPTOMS

When you set the Visible property of a control to True at run-time, the active control loses focus. The control for which you changed the Visible property gains the focus.

This problem occurs with the Sheridan 3D controls (SSRibbon, SOption, SSPanel, SSCommand, SSFrame and SSCheck).

NOTE: This problem will occur with other controls created with the MFC Control FrameWork.

RESOLUTION

To work around this problem, set the focus back to the control that was active prior to changing the Visible property of the Sheridan 3D control. The following code illustrates how you can restore focus to the active control after changing the Visible property of a SSPanel control:

   Dim ctrl as Control

   Set ctrl = ActiveControl
   SSPanel1.Visible = True
   ctrl.SetFocus

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a bug in the Microsoft products listed at the beginning of this article. We are researching this bug and will post new information here in the Microsoft Knowledge Base as it becomes available.

MORE INFORMATION

Steps to Reproduce Behavior

1. Open a new "Standard EXE" project.

2. Click Components on the Project menu. Check "Sheridan 3D Controls" (THREED32.OCX) and click OK.

   NOTE: If you do not have THREED32.OCX installed, refer to README.TXT in the \Tools\Controls directory of your Visual Basic 5.0 CD-ROM.

3. Add an SSPanel control and a TextBox control to Form1.

4. Set the Visible property of the SSPanel control to False.

5. Add the following code to the Click event of Form1.

         SSPanel1.Visible = True
         Debug.Print ActiveControl.Name
   

6. Press the F5 key to run the application.

7. Set the focus to Text1 and then click the Form. Notice that the SSPanel control has the focus and not Text1 as expected.