Advanced MFC Programming

Chapter 1. Tool Bar and Dialog Bar
The Application Wizard does an excellent job in adding a very powerful tool bar. Nevertheless, as a
programmer, we are kept from knowing what makes all these happen. If we need to make changes to the
default tool bar (for example, we want it to be docked to the bottom border instead of top border at the
beginning), which part of the source code should we modify? Obviously, we need to understand the
essentials of tool bar implementation in order to customize it.
Like menu, generally tool bar is implemented in the mainframe window. When creating a mainframe
menu, we need to prepare a menu resource, use class CMenu to declare a variable, then use it to load the
menu resource. Creating a tool bar takes similar steps: we need to prepare a tool bar resource, use class
CToolBar to declare a variable, which can be used to load the tool bar resource. After the tool bar resource
is loaded successfully, we can call a series of member functions of CToolBar to create the tool bar and
customize its styles.
After creating a standard SDI or MDI application using Application Wizard (with “Docking toolbar”
check box checked in step 4, see Figure 1-1), we will find that a CToolBar type variable is declared in class
CMainFrame:
Check here to let
Application Wizard
add a default
dockable tool bar
for us
Figure 1-1: Let Application Wizard add a default dockable tool bar
……
……
class CMainFrame : public CFrameWnd
{
protected: // control bar embedded members
CStatusBar m_wndStatusBar;
CToolBar m_wndToolBar;
}
The newly declared variable is m_wndToolBar. By tracing this variable, we will find out how the tool
bar is implemented.
Tool Bar Implementation
Tool bar creation occurs in function CMainFrame::OnCreate(…), where the mainframe window is
being created. Tool bar is created after function CFrameWnd::OnCreate(…) is called, which creates the
default mainframe window. Creating a tool bar takes following steps:
1) Call CToolBar::Create(…) to create tool bar window.
1) Call CToolBar::LoadToolBar(…) to load the tool bar resource. We need to pass a tool bar resource ID
to this function.
2