Teach Yourself Borland C++ in 14 Days - portal

228 Day 7
Figure 7.5.
A form with
AutoScroll in
action.
Preventing Components from Being Moved
or Sized
Components can be locked into place so that they cannot be moved. Locking components
is useful if you know that a form’s design is final and you don’t want to worry about
accidentally moving controls. To lock a form’s controls, choose Edit | Lock Controls from
the main menu. Locked controls cannot be moved or sized. When controls are locked, their
sizing handles are gray with a black border. To unlock the controls again, choose Edit | Lock
Controls again. The controls can now be moved as before.
Ordering, Cutting, Copying, and Pasting
Components
You will place some components on top of one another in order to achieve a visual effect. For
example, you can create a shadowed box by placing a white box over a black box (both would
be Shape components). Obviously, you can’t have the shadow on top of the box, so you have
to have some way of ordering the controls to tell C++Builder which controls go on top and
which go on the bottom. Let’s do a simple exercise that illustrates this. Along the way you
will also see how you can use Copy and Paste with components. First (as always), start with
a blank form. Now do this:
1. Click on the Additional tab on the Component Palette and choose the Shape
component. Click on the form to place the shape. A white square appears on the
form.
2. Size the shape as desired (mine ended up being 209 pixels by 129 pixels).
3. Be sure the Shape component is selected. Choose Edit | Copy from the main menu.
4. Choose Edit | Paste from the main menu. A copy of the shape is placed below and
to the right of the original shape. Conveniently, this is exactly where we want it.