Teach Yourself Borland C++ in 14 Days - portal

The C++Builder IDE Explored: Projects and Forms
4. Create the MDI child forms.
5. Create an About box.
6. Stand back and admire our work.
There’s no point in dawdling (time is money!), so let’s get right to it.
Step 1: Create the Main Window Form
First we’ll create the main window form. The main window for an MDI application must
have the FormStyle property set to fsMDIForm. We will also need to add a menu to the
application, as well as File Open and File Save dialog boxes:
1. Start C++Builder and choose File | New Application from the main menu.
2. For the main form, change the Name property to MainForm.
3. Change the Caption property to Picture Viewer.
4. Change the Height to 450 and the Width to 575.
5. Change the FormStyle to fsMDIForm.
Okay, now we’ve got the main part of the form done. Next we’ll add a menu to the form.
Because I haven’t discussed the Menu Editor yet, we’ll take the easy route to creating a menu.
To do that, we’ll take advantage of a C++Builder feature that allows us to import a predefined
menu:
1. Click on the Standard tab of the Component Palette and click the MainMenu
button.
2. Drop a MainMenu component on the form. It doesn’t matter where you drop it
because the icon representing the menu is just a placeholder and won’t show on the
form at runtime.
3. Change the Name property to MainMenu.
4. Double-click on the MainMenu component. The Menu Editor is displayed. (We’ll
look at the Menu Editor in more detail tomorrow.)
5. Place your cursor over the Menu Editor and click your right mouse button. The
Insert Template dialog box appears. Choose Insert from template… from the speed
menu. Figure 6.15 shows the Insert Template dialog box with the Menu Editor
behind it.
6. Choose MDI Frame Menu and click OK. The menu is displayed in the Menu
Editor.
7. Click the system close box on the Menu Editor to close it.
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