This chapter extends the ideas introduced in Chapter
3, "Implementing Navigational Design," and describes further steps you can
take to provide the user with a functioning data input form or dialog box.
You may include several standard 32-bit ActiveX controls on your form to enhance
your Visual Basic application's user interface. These controls organize data and
provide different ways of presenting information to the user, give you additional
means of displaying information about the environment, and also provide the means
for you—as a developer—to manipulate data and controls.
Here is a brief description of what the ActiveX controls discussed in this
chapter do:
The ImageList control gives you a means of loading
graphics files, such as icons and bitmaps, into your application for use with
other controls.
You can use the ListView control to organize data in lists.
The ToolBar control lets you quickly build toolbars in your application,
giving users an alternative to the menu for performing actions.
You can add the StatusBar to a form to present information about the environment
to the user through text messages and progress bars.
We then discuss control arrays that allow your application to dynamically create
and destroy controls as the application runs.
Next we examine the related concept of a form's Controls Collection that you
can use to manipulate controls without referencing each by name.
Turning our attention to the manipulation of forms, we first discuss the different
techniques for managing forms programmatically.
Finally we talk about how to manipulate the loaded forms in an application
without referencing each form by name. As you might expect from the earlier description
of the Controls Collection, we will use the Forms Collection.
