Adding Controls to Your Form
Use the Add Control command from the Controls menu to add a new control to your current form.
You can also add a control by using palette buttons. A description of each palette button is displayed in bubble help when you move the mouse over each palette button.
It not possible to handle the painting of transparent controls in the correct zOrder when it involves a mixture of controls that can be directly painted by JADE and those that can only be painted separately by Windows. As a result, transparent sibling controls are always be painted before any JadeRichText, MultiMedia, JadeXamlControl, Ocx, OleControl, JadeDotNetVisualComponent, or ActiveXControl controls, regardless of their zOrder settings.
For details about editing a form, see "Editing an Existing Form", and for details about designing a menu, see "Designing Menus", later in this chapter. See also "Allowing Control Docking", later in this chapter.
To add a new control to your form
-
Select the Add Control command from the Controls menu.
The Add Control dialog is then displayed.
Double-click a button in the Painter Control palette to add multiple instances of the selected control. For example, if you double-click the CheckBox palette button, you can then click the cursor in your form the number of times required to add new check boxes in the required positions.
You must click the Pointer button () at the far left of the Control palette to terminate the add control mode, return to painter mode, and continue painting your form.
-
Select the type of control that you want to add from the list of controls in the Add Control Type list box.
-
Click the Add button. When you now move the cursor over unfilled parts of your form, the cursor becomes a cross.
-
To position your control, move the cursor, and then click to gain the default control size or drag it out to the required size.
-
To size the control, drag the sizing handles (the eight small boxes that surround the border of a selected control).
-
To finely position the control, click inside the control, and then drag it to the required location on your form.
-
Apply properties to your control by using the Show Properties Dialog command in the Window menu, by pressing F4, or by double-clicking the form. For details, see "Maintaining Properties for Your Form or Control", later in this chapter.
All controls are children of the form or container control on which they are drawn. Being a child control affects the placement of the control within the parent form or container.
The left and top properties of a control are relative to the parent control. Moving the form or container also moves the controls.
You can display a hierarchical list of all controls painted on the currently active form. For details, see "Displaying a Hierarchical List of Controls on a Form", later in this chapter.
Use the Grid command or Show Alignment Hairs command from the Options menu to assist you in positioning your controls on the form, if required. (For details, see "Using Grids to Position Controls on Forms" and "Using Alignment Hairs to Position Controls on Forms", later in this chapter.)
To access the online help topic for the current control, click the right mouse button and select the Help on control command from the popup menu that is then displayed. Online help that relates directly to the control that has focus on a form in the JADE Painter is then displayed. For example, if a TextBox control is selected, the "TextBox Class" JADE online help topic is displayed.
Alternatively, if the selected control is an ActiveX control that was imported into JADE, the help file associated with that ActiveX control is then opened. (Online help for an ActiveX control is a separate help file provided by the organization that wrote the control, it relates only to that control, and it is not part of the JADE online help.)
For details about changing the type of an existing control on a form (for example, changing a GroupBox control that does not have children to a Frame control), see "Changing a Control Type" under "Editing an Existing Form", later in this chapter.
) at the far left of the Control palette to terminate the add control mode, return to painter mode, and continue painting your form.