BtnBar.exe Demonstrates a Button Bar

ID: Q74999

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Windows Software Development Kit (SDK) 3.1

SUMMARY

The file BtnBar.exe in the Microsoft Software Library demonstrates one method of adding a button bar to an application, such as the toolbar, which is found in Microsoft Excel.

MORE INFORMATION

For the button bar to correctly interact with the Multiple Document Interface (MDI) functions of Windows, the client window must be resized to avoid painting problems. The code in the BTNBAR file is designed to be merged into the MULTIPAD sample application that is provided with the Windows SDK.

The remainder of this article provides some information on the design of this button bar implementation.

Each button on the button bar is defined in an array of TOOL structures, which is defined as follows:


   typedef struct tagTOOL

    {
    HICON     hIcon;             // 2
    WORD      CommandID;         // 2
    BOOL      bEnabled;          // 2
    WORD      x, y, dx, dy;      // 8
    }                            // --

  TOOL;                          // 14 bytes total

To conserve system resources, the determination that a given button has been pressed is done by performing hit testing, instead of creating separate buttons. Hit testing is demonstrated in Charles Petzold's "Checkers" program, presented in the "Microsoft Systems Journal."

This implementation of the button bar uses icons to label the buttons. The DrawTool() function draws a plain button with a gray face and dark edges, to simulate a three-dimensional object. Then, the icon specified in the structure is drawn over the button. This icon must use the "screen" color for its background color. This places the icon image on the button with minimal coding effort.

When the user clicks on a button, the button bar code sends a WM_COMMAND message to the main window (ghWnd). The wParam parameter of this message is set to the CommandID value.

REFERENCES

The following files are available for download from the Microsoft Download Center. Click the file names below to download the files:

BtnBar.exe

For more information about how to download files from the Microsoft Download Center, please visit the Download Center at the following Web address

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/search.asp

and then click How to use the Microsoft Download Center.

Additional query words:

Keywords : kbfile kbsample kb16bitonly kbCtrl kbSDKPlatform kbGrpUser
Version : WINDOWS:3.1
Platform : WINDOWS
Issue type : kbinfo