Visual Basic Concepts

Using Other Controls with the CoolBar

There are certain limitations to the controls that can be used as child controls on a CoolBar control.

The CoolBar control can only host controls which expose a Window handle. Lightweight controls such as Label, Image, and Shape controls don't expose a Window handle and can't be used. Although you can place these controls on the CoolBar, they won't appear at run time and won't be listed in the Child list box on the Property Page.

Although each band in the CoolBar control can only host a single child control, you can get around this limitation by placing a container control (such as a PictureBox) on the band and hosting additional controls within that container. Keep in mind that if you do this, you will need to create the code to resize the nested controls in response to changes in the CoolBar.

Some controls may not behave as expected when contained within a CoolBar control. For example, a contained Toolbar control won’t paint properly when its Wrappable property is set to True and the CoolBar is resized. To avoid this problem, set the Wrappable property to False.