You can set most of the properties of a control object at either design time
or at runtime.
To set a control's property at design time:
STEP BY STEP
3.4 Manipulating a Control's Property at Design Time
-
Use the F4 key or choose View, Properties from the VB menu to bring up
the Properties window, as shown in Figure 3.11.
FIGURE 3.11 - Setting properties in the Properties window.
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Find the property in question on the list. You may navigate the properties
list by pressing Shift + the first letter of the property name.
-
Set the property to the appropriate value.
Depending on the nature of the information that the property represents, you
will find different ways to set the property:
Properties that can take a wide range of numeric values or a string of text
are usually changed by simply typing in the value you want to assign.
Properties that represent Boolean values (such as the CommandButton's Cancel
and Default properties) can be toggled by double-clicking them.
Properties that can hold a small range of named, enumerated values (such as
the MousePointer property) usually exhibit a drop-down list of the possible values.
Properties (such as Font or BackColor) that contain subcomponents or more
visually complex information may popup their own property dialog box or Property
Page when you double-click them.
To set a control property at runtime, use the familiar object.property syntax
to assign a value to the property. For example if you want to assign the string
"Activate" to the Caption property of the CommandButton named cmdExecute at runtime,
you would put the line
cmdExecute.Caption = "Activate"
Other properties can take the name of the appropriate VB constant. In the following
example, the vbHourGlass constant for the MousePointer can be found in the drop-down
list of values at design time. The vbRed constant could be found in the ObjectBrowser's
list of the VBRun library's Color constants.
txtName.MousePointer = vbHourGlass
lblName.BackColor = vbRed
Finally, for properties which are complex objects, you may need to use double-dotted
syntax to refer to the property of a property of an object, as in the following
examples with sub-properties of the Font property of a TextBox:
txtInvitation.Font.Bold = True
txtInvitation.Font.Name = "Arial"
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