Adding Text to a Docking Toolbar

Environment: VC6

This article demonstrates an easy way to add text to a docking tool bar.
I was needed to add text to the toolbar for my dBase Explorer project
(visit my web site for detail information:
http://www.codearchive.com/~dbase).
Although, I found some of the articles on it in the code projects/guru sites. Most of
them are difficult to implement, and need to add a lot of coding or even a new class.
Finally, I found the easy way to add text to a toolbar. So I would like to share it
with the rest of the world. This article shows how you can add text to a toolbar only
by adding a few lines of code. In order to add texts to a toolbar, you need to declare
a member variables type CToolBar to the CMainFrame class as shown below:


// Any source code blocks look like this
class CMainFrame : public CFrameWnd
{

protected: // create from serialization only
CMainFrame();
DECLARE_DYNCREATE(CMainFrame)

protected: // control bar embedded members
CStatusBar m_wndStatusBar;
CToolBar m_wndToolBar;


};

If you use App Wizard to create your application, the member variable will be declared
for you. So do you do not need to declared it by yourself. However, you have to call
SetButtonText function with two parameters, first one is index of the icon, and the
second one is the actual text. The actual text will appear just below the icon. The
index start from 0. Each separator has also an index. So you have to count that too.
The program listing below shows the index of each icon and also the text for each icon.

The complete listing of OnCreate function is given below:


int CMainFrame::OnCreate(LPCREATESTRUCT lpCreateStruct)
{
if (CFrameWnd::OnCreate(lpCreateStruct) == -1)
return -1;

if (!m_wndToolBar.CreateEx(this, TBSTYLE_FLAT, WS_CHILD |
WS_VISIBLE | CBRS_TOP | CBRS_GRIPPER | CBRS_TOOLTIPS |
CBRS_FLYBY | CBRS_SIZE_DYNAMIC) ||
!m_wndToolBar.LoadToolBar(IDR_MAINFRAME))
{
TRACE0(“Failed to create toolbar\n”);
return -1; // fail to create
}

if (!m_wndStatusBar.Create(this) ||
!m_wndStatusBar.SetIndicators(indicators,
sizeof(indicators)/sizeof(UINT)))
{
TRACE0(“Failed to create status bar\n”);
return -1; // fail to create
}

m_wndToolBar.SetButtonText(0,”New”);
m_wndToolBar.SetButtonText(1,”Open”);
m_wndToolBar.SetButtonText(2,”Save”);
m_wndToolBar.SetButtonText(4,”Cut”);
m_wndToolBar.SetButtonText(5,”Copy”);
m_wndToolBar.SetButtonText(6,”Paste”);
m_wndToolBar.SetButtonText(8,”Print”);
m_wndToolBar.SetButtonText(10,”About”);
m_wndToolBar.SetSizes(CSize(42,38),CSize(16,15));

m_wndToolBar.EnableDocking(CBRS_ALIGN_ANY);
EnableDocking(CBRS_ALIGN_ANY);
DockControlBar(&m_wndToolBar);

return 0;

About the Author:
Zahirul Haque started his software development career using C/C++ on Unix at Siemens Austria in 1991. In 1993, the author left Vienna and moved to Canada as an immigrant. Since then he has been working in various Canadian companies using C, C++, Java, Pro*C, SQL, PL/SQL, JavaScript, ASP (Active Server Pages), Oracle Designer/2000, Developer/2000, Oracle 7/8/8i, Microsoft Access Database, Codebase, xBase database, XVT Tools, Open Interface, Unix, X-Windows, Windows NT, Windows 3.1/95/98 etc. He is currently developing a xBase/dBase database tool called “dBase Explorer”. dBase Explorer can be used to view data as well as all information including columns, version etc. of any dBase file. The demo version of this tool can be downloaded from his personal web site : http://www.codearchive.com/~dbase
He is willing to take any contact software development project.

Downloads

Download demo project – 18 Kb

Download source – 3 Kb

More by Author

Get the Free Newsletter!

Subscribe to Developer Insider for top news, trends & analysis

Must Read