Advanced MFC Programming

Chapter 1. Tool Bar and Dialog Bar
Click here to
set styles
Don’t let a dialog
bar have border
Change window
style to “Child”
Figure 1-10. Set dialog bar styles
Button IDC_BUTTON_A and
IDC_BUTTON_B
Edit box
IDC_EDIT
Combo box
IDC_COMBO
Figure 1-11. Dialog bar template resource
3) Enable docking by calling function CDialogBar::EnableDocking(…), dock the dialog bar by calling
function CMainFrame::DockControlBar(…):
……
……
……
m_wndDialogBar.EnableDocking(CBRS_ALIGN_ANY);
DockControlBar(&m_wndDialogBar);
Because class CDialogBar is derived from CControlBar, in step 3, when we call function
CDialogBar::EnableDocking(…) to enable docking for the dialog bar, we are actually calling function
CControlBar::EnableDocking(…). This is the same with that of tool bar. Because of this, both tool bar and
dialog bar have the same docking properties.
By compiling and executing the sample at this point, we can see that the dialog bar is implemented,
which is docked to the bottom border at the beginning. We can drag the dialog bar and dock it to other
borders. As we do this, we may notice the difference between dialog bar and tool bar: while the size of the
tool bar will be automatically adjusted when it is docked differently (horizontally or vertically), the size of
dialog will not change under any condition. The reason for this is that a dialog bar usually contains
irregular controls, so it is relatively difficult to adjust its size automatically. By default, dynamic size
adjustment is not supported by class CDialogBar. If we want our dialog bar to support this feature, we need
to override function CDialogBar::CalcDynamicLayout(…).
To prevent a dialog bar from taking up too much area when it is docked to left or right border, we can
put restriction on the dialog bar so that it can only be docked to top or bottom border. To implement this,
we can change the style flag from CBRS_ALIGN_ANY to CBRS_ALIGN_TOP | CBRS_ALIGN_BOTTOM when
calling function CDialogBar::EnableDocking(…) in step 3 discussed above.
1.9. Resizable Dialog Bar
Because dialog bar can contain more powerful controls than tool bar, we could use it to implement
control bars with more flexibility. To make user-friendly interface, sometimes we may really want to
dynamically change a dialog bar’s size.
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