Is there some easy way to customize a ComboBox from Delphi to make the dropdown button with the arrow invisible? I mean without a lot of custom-draw code.. Maybe there is some control specific windows flag to set.
If I understand you correctly, you want all the functionality of the cxDBLookupComboBox, just not the button.
Try this in the FormCreate:
cxDBLookupComboBox1.Properties.Buttons.Clear;
You can access other combo box buttons properties via non-published Buttons property just like that.
Related
In delphi:
How can you respond to a key press when the current focus is on a radiogroup which does not have an onkeypress event. I was hoping to use the forms onkeypress event but it doesnt see to fire.
You can make this possible by setting the form's KeyPreview property to True.
However, I'm not sure you are actually doing things right, since this is a fairly uncommon problem.
You didn't write what keyboard shortcut you want to respond to. But please remember that
Letters are used to navigate the GUI. For instance, pressing A might select the &All radio button or click the &Add push button. Similarly, Alt+A does the same if the current control allows character input, allows you to open the &Add-ons menu item, etc.
If you want to add a proper shortcut like Ctrl+O, it is much better to use a TActionList with an action having this shortcut. This action can be mapped to menu items, buttons, etc., or simply exist in the background not being attached to any visual control. In very simple applications, you might want to use a stand-alone menu item with such a shortcut instead.
I have a TActionToolbar...But there's one "feature" I can't quite figure out how to control.
From the customize dialog (Vcl.CustomizeDlg.TCustomizeDlg) for a TActionToolbar. Note the caption options listbox:
So how exactly do you use selective captions? Right now it appears to be identical to "full" captions, as I can't seem to piece together how you tell Delphi which buttons should display selective captions (or what the selective caption wording should be if it is customizable)
TAction doesn't seem to have any properties that appear to relate to selective captions. The description and examples for TCaption didn't seem to get any hints either.
...Or is this just one of those cases where Delphi is showing some sort of standard windows dialog including features Delphi doesn't actually support?
So how exactly do you use selective captions?
As the same suggests it, it allows to have some buttons showing their caption and some others to don't show it.
Once you've set the action in your toolbar, click on the button. Then go in the inspector and go to the property "ShowCaption" and set it to false. For each button you will do that, the caption will be hidden.
I will try to place a graphic here showing that.
1-click the tool button
2-go to the object inspector
3-see the "ShowCaption" property and set it to "false"
4-then see the result, the first button is now showing its caption
I use that from time to time to gain some space on a toolbar with too much button to hide the caption on some obvious button.
Trying to get a new style on a ComboBox in FireMonkey (XE2).
But for some odd reason I cannot get the text of a ListBoxItem to show.
What I've tried is the following.
Create a new FireMonkey HD Application.
On the form I've added a ComboBox.
Right click on the ComboBox and select 'Edit custom style'
There I've added the following components
while the original one consist out of the following components
Now it seems to me that I need the TContent object (but I can't seem to find it in the toolpallete)
How can i bind my Text object to the strings that are placed in my ComboBox?
Any pointers are very welcome.
FireMonkey doesn't use a TText object to display the text. Instead it creates a copy of the list box item within the TContent (if I remember correctly).
As you've worked out you need to add a TContent to your form. The easy way to do this is to
go back to the form,
right click and select View as Text
Find the TStyleBook object and add a TContent at the appropriate point (the format for this should be obvious from the rest of the file).
No need to add any properties - defaults will be used the first time.
Right click, View as Form.
Go back into the style editor and edit away.
You can easily achieve a multicolumn effect in a listbox by setting the TabWidth property of TListbox. For example, http://delphi.about.com/cs/adptips2000/a/bltip1200_3.htm
I need to do the same in the drop down list of a ComboBox, but comboboxes don't publish any TabWidth property.
Any ideas?
In a comment to this answer advising you to owner-draw the list box items you say:
I'm wondering why I must do that when the required functionality already exists on a listbox
A combo box is actually composed of three native child windows - the combo box itself, an embedded edit, and a list box. You can use the GetComboBoxInfo() function to fill a COMBOBOXINFO structure (i.e. a TComboBoxInfo record) with information about the control, and it will return the 3 HWND elements in it. With that you are able to alter the appearance and behaviour of the list box. In principle.
For the list box to use the tab stops it needs to have the LBS_USETABSTOPS style flag set. Unfortunately this can't be turned on later, the list box has to be created with it. So you could use the functionality only if you were able to turn the style flag on for the list box, which is created during the CreateWindowEx() call for the combo box. AFAICS this can only be done by hooking the CreateWindowEx() call itself, identifying the internal call that creates the list box, and altering the passed style. This means runtime modification of code, and not in your executable but in a Windows DLL.
Owner-drawing the list items looks like it would be much easier.
From what I know there is not so simple way as TabWidth here but you can override Paint method and draw it yourself. Looking at listbox and combobox sources may help.
My aim is to update the look of the GUI in my app. Currently my GUI contains a lot of listboxes which are used to edit some objects in an old fashioned way, that is, user double-clicks an item and a dialog is shown to modify the corresponding object.
I think a good modern approach is how Firefox displays the extensions installed (a snapshot below).
My question is about how to build such a GUI in Delphi(win32) easily? Are there any components you use mimicing such behaviour or will I just need to code this from stratch using panels? (IMO a very cumbersome job I'd like to avoid - the selection logic, resizings, etc...)
You can do something similar (not exactly) with standard components; TDBCtrlGrid, TSpeedButton,...
alt text http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/9585/imagen29ox3.png
If you're using Delphi 2007 or Delphi 2009, you might be able to do something similar using TCategoryButtons (from the 'Additional' component palette page). Drop it on a form and right click to display the popup menu, and then click "Categories Editor...". Add a category with the resulting dialog, set it's caption, and optionally set up Items it contains. Not exactly the same, but it might do what you need.
You could also use a dialog with a TTreeView (if you have categories of objects) or TListView to emulate the Delphi 2007 Projects->Options dialog. Clicking an item in the TreeView or ListView displays the proper page of a TPageControl to configure the object.
I mostly agree with Lars, but I would use a frame for each item instead of a panel. That would separate into its own file, and you would get easy designtime support for it.
Using a TFrame for each list item and put them all Aligned Top on a TScrollBox might work. Also see TDBCtrlGrid which does something like that in combination with datasets.
It can be done with existing Delphi controls.
For instance in the TCustomListBox control you can create your own OnDrawItem event to draw your own list item. You also need to create your own OnMeasureItem to change the item height.
In some cases it is very limited, so if you want more freedom you will need to do it from scratch.