Teach Yourself Borland C++ in 14 Days - portal

224 Day 7
Multiple Selection by Dragging
You can select multiple controls by dragging a bounding rectangle around the controls to be
selected. The bounding rectangle is a dashed (or is it dotted?) gray rectangle that changes size
as you drag. In fact, you don’t have to drag the bounding rectangle completely around the
components. You only have to touch a component with the bounding rectangle in order for
it to be included in the selection.
Be sure that you start by placing the mouse cursor over the background of the form and not
on a component. Hold the primary mouse button down and begin dragging. You will see the
bounding rectangle as you drag. Surround or touch the components you want selected and
release the mouse button. Any components that were inside the bounding rectangle (or
touching it) are included in the selection.
When you have a group of controls selected, you can use the Shift+click technique explained
in the previous section to add other controls from the selection or to remove controls from
the selection. For example, you might want to select all controls in one area of your
form except for one. Surround the controls and then deselect the control you want to
exclude from the selection.
Go back to the form with the three buttons you created earlier (if you’ve already discarded
that form, create a new one and place three buttons on it). Start at the top-left corner and drag
down and to the right to surround the buttons. Let go of the mouse button, and the controls
will be selected. Figure 7.3 shows the form and the bounding rectangle being dragged.
Figure 7.3.
Controls being selected
by dragging.
TIP
You can use Shift+drag to select non-adjacent groups of controls. If, for
instance, you had two separate groups of controls in separate areas on
your form, you could drag around the first set of controls and then
hold the Shift key down and drag around the second set of controls.
Both groups of controls will be selected.