Control Topics

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Controls are objects that users can interact with to enter or manipulate data. They commonly appear in dialog boxes or on toolbars. This article family covers three main kinds of controls:

Windows common controls, including owner-drawn controls
ActiveX Controls
Other control classes supplied by the Microsoft Foundation Class Library (MFC)

Windows Common Controls

The Windows operating system has always provided a number of Windows common controls. These control objects are programmable, and the Visual C++ dialog editor supports adding them to your dialog boxes. The Microsoft Foundation Class Library (MFC) supplies classes that encapsulate each of these controls, as shown in the table Windows Common Controls and MFC Classes. (Some items in the table have related articles that describe them further. For controls that lack articles, see the documentation for the MFC class.)

Class CWnd is the base class of all window classes, including all of the control classes. The Windows common controls are supported in the following environments:

Windows 95
Windows NT, version 3.51 and later
Win32s, version 1.3 (Visual C++ version 4.2 and later do not support Win32s)

The older common controls — check boxes, combo boxes, edit boxes, list boxes, option buttons, pushbuttons, scroll bar controls, and static controls — were available in earlier versions of Windows as well.

ActiveX Controls

ActiveX controls, formerly known as OLE controls, can be used in dialog boxes in your applications for Windows, or in HTML pages on the World Wide Web. For more information, see ActiveX Control Topics.

Other MFC Control Classes

In addition to classes that encapsulate all of the Windows common controls and that support programming your own ActiveX controls (or using ActiveX controls supplied by others), MFC supplies the following control classes of its own:

Finding Information About Windows Common Controls

The table below briefly describes each of the Windows common controls, including the control's MFC wrapper class.

Windows Common Controls and MFC Classes

Control	MFC Class	Description	New in Windows 95?
animation	CAnimateCtrl	displays successive frames of an AVI video clip	yes
button	CButton	pushbuttons that cause an action; also used for check boxes, radio buttons, and group boxes	no
combo box	CComboBox	combination of an edit box and a list box	no
date and time picker	CDateTimeCtrl	allows the user to choose a specific date or time value	yes
edit box	CEdit	boxes for entering text	no
extended combo box	CComboBoxEx	a combo box control with the ability to display images	yes
header	CHeaderCtrl	button that appears above a column of text; controls width of text displayed	yes
hotkey	CHotKeyCtrl	window that enables user to create a "hot key" to perform an action quickly	yes
image list	CImageList	collection of images used to manage large sets of icons or bitmaps (image list isn't really a control; it supports lists used by other controls)	yes
list	CListCtrl	window that displays a list of text with icons	yes
list box	CListBox	box that contains a list of strings	no
month calendar	CMonthCalCtrl	control that displays date information	yes
progress	CProgressCtrl	window that indicates progress of a long operation	yes
rebar	CRebarCtrl	tool bar that can contain additional child windows in the form of controls	yes
rich edit	CRichEditCtrl	window in which user can edit with character and paragraph formatting (see Classes Related to Rich Edit Controls)	yes
scroll bar	CScrollBar	scroll bar used as a control inside a dialog box (not on a window)	no
slider	CSliderCtrl	window containing a slider control with optional tick marks	yes
spin button	CSpinButtonCtrl	pair of arrow buttons user can click to increment or decrement a value	yes
static-text	CStatic	text for labeling other controls	no
status bar	CStatusBarCtrl	window for displaying status information, similar to MFC class CStatusBar	yes
tab	CTabCtrl	analogous to the dividers in a notebook; used in "tab dialog boxes" or property sheets	yes
toolbar	CToolBarCtrl	window with command-generating buttons, similar to MFC class CToolBar	yes
tool tip	CToolTipCtrl	small pop-up window that describes purpose of a toolbar button or other tool	yes
tree	CTreeCtrl	window that displays a hierarchical list of items	yes

What do you want to know more about?

An individual control: see the table Windows Common Controls and MFC Classes in this article for links to all controls
Making and using controls
Using the dialog editor to add controls
Adding controls to a dialog box by hand
Deriving control classes from the MFC control classes
Using common controls as child windows
Notifications from common controls