Computer Programming Concepts and Visual Basic David I. Schneider

The Flags property influences certain features of the dialog box and should be set prior
to setting the Show method. A complete discussion of the Flags property would be too great
a digression. For our purposes, we will be well served by always setting the Flags property
to 3 with the statement
dlgBox.Flags = 3
After selections are made from a common dialog box and the OK button is clicked, the values
of the selections are stored in properties such as FileName, Color, FontName, FontItalic,
FontSize and Copies. For instance, the following event procedure specifies the font for the
contents of a text box.
Private Sub cmdButton_Click()
dlgFont.Flags = 3
dlgFont.ShowFont ‘invoke Font common dialog box
‘Select Font, Font style, and Size and then click on OK
txtBox.Font.Name = dlgFont.FontName
txtBox.Font.Bold = dlgFont.FontBold
txtBox.Font.Italic = dlgFont.FontItalic
txtBox.Font.Size = dlgFont.FontSize
End Sub
Table 10.2 gives the principal properties whose setting are garnered from the common
dialog boxes.
TABLE 10.2
Principal Properties of the Common Dialog Boxes
Type of Common
Dialog Box Principal Properties
Open FileName
Save As FileName
Color Color
Font FontName, FontSize, FontBold, FontItalic
Print Copies, FromPage, ToPage
With Open and Save As common dialog boxes, a property is needed to specify what
types of files should be displayed. A statement of the form
dlgFile.Filter = “dscrpt1|filter1|dscrpt2|filter2|dscrpt3|filter3“
provides verbal descriptions for the Type box and strings using wildcard characters (filters) to
identify the files. A specific statement might be
dlgFile.Filter = “Text Files|*.TXT|FRM Files|*.FRM|All Files|*.*”
After the filter property is set, the FilterIndex property can be used to set the default filter. For
instance, if the preceding statement is followed with
dlgFile.FilterIndex = 1
the default will be the first pair of filter items. That is, when the dialog box pops up, the Files
of type box will display Text Files, and the large box will show only files with the extension
TXT.
COMMENT
1. In the Properties window of a FlexGrid control, one setting of the GridLines
property is “0 – flexGridNone.” In code, this setting can be invoked with either
Five Additional Objects 315