Controls: Overview

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Controls are interactive objects that you place in dialog boxes or other windows to carry out user actions. The controls that you can use or create with Visual C++ include:

• Windows common controls, including those introduced with Windows 95.
  
  
• Additional controls available with MFC, such as bitmap buttons.
  
  
• ActiveX controls that you create yourself or that you obtain from control suppliers.
  
  
• Owner-drawn controls, for which you supply code for drawing the control and for interacting with it.

MFC supplies classes for manipulating Windows common controls, or you can use the Windows API functions for that purpose. The Visual C++ dialog editor lets you add these controls to your dialog boxes.

ActiveX controls are based on a programming model that lets you develop any sort of control you need, such as grid controls or data access controls. Based on the Common Object Model (COM), these controls are binary objects usable in any ActiveX control container, including pages on the Internet’s World Wide Web and containers developed with Visual C++ and Visual Basic.

What do you want to do?

• Learn more about:
  • Windows common controls
    
    
  • ActiveX controls
• Add common controls to a dialog box in a Visual C++ application
  
  
• Program common controls: initialize them, modify their properties, extract data from them
  
  
• Use MFC controls:
  • CBitmapButton
    
    
  • CCheckListBox
    
    
  • CDragListBox
• Create an ActiveX control
  
  
• Add an existing ActiveX control to a dialog box