User's Guide


Windows 95 parts

The Windows 95 controls include the following:

Win95 Controls icon   Win95 Controls Category
Tab Strip icon   Tab Strip
Creates tabbed dialog boxes when used with a Tab control.
Tab icon   Tab
Creates tabbed dialog boxes when used with a Tab Strip.
Tool Bar icon   Tool Bar
Creates a tool bar when used with a Tool Button.
Tool Button icon   Tool Button
Creates a component for a Tool Bar.
Separator Button icon   Separator Button
Separates tool buttons when used with a Tool Bar and Tool Button controls.
Status Bar icon   Status Bar
Creates a status bar that can display various kinds of status information.
Status Panel icon   Status Panel
Displays various kinds of status information when used with a Status Bar.
Track Bar icon   Track Bar
Lets a user select a discrete value or a set of consecutive values within a range. Also known as a "slider".
Progress Bar icon   Progress Bar
Graphically depicts the progress of an operation by filling a progress area with small, solid rectangles.
Tree View icon   Tree View
Displays information as a hierarchy.

At the core of these visual parts are the native Windows 95 controls. The native Windows 95 controls are wrapped in VisualAge Smalltalk, which provides them with a standard VisualAge public interface. You can use these visual parts as you would any other VisualAge visual parts.

Some of these parts are similar to other VisualAge visual parts. For example, the Windows 95 Track Bar is similar to the Slider in the Buttons category. An obvious question is when to use a Windows 95 visual part and when to use another, similar visual part.

There are advantages and disadvantages of using either of the types of parts. The advantage of using the Windows 95 visual parts is that you get controls which include the base Windows 95 controls and are tuned to a Windows 95 desktop graphical user interface environment. The disadvantage of the Windows 95 visual parts is that they are not portable to Windows 3.11, OS/2, and the UNIX platforms that VisualAge supports. In general, you should use the Windows 95 visual parts if matching Windows 95 graphical user interface control behavior is more important. You should use the other, corresponding visual parts if portability to other platforms is more important.

In the next several sections, we'll look at these visual parts in a little more detail and build up a simple example illustrating their use.


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