Study of various Buttons:Push Buttons A push button is a rectangle enclosing text specified in the window text parameter of the

CreateWindow call. The rectangle takes up the full height and width of the dimensions given in the CreateWindow or MoveWindow call. The text is centered within the rectangle The two types of push-button controls have window styles called BS_PUSHBUTTON and BS_DEFPUSHBUTTON. The "DEF" in BS_DEFPUSHBUTTON stands for "default. A push button looks best when its height is 7/4 times the height of a text character When the mouse cursor is inside the push button, pressing the mouse button causes the button to repaint itself using 3D-style shading to appear as if it's been depressed. Releasing the mouse button restores the original appearance and sends a WM_COMMAND message to the parent window with the notification code BN_CLICKED. As with the other button types, when a push button has the input focus, a dashed line surrounds the text and pressing and releasing the Spacebar has the same effect as pressing and releasing the mouse button.

You can simulate a push-button flash by sending the window a BM_SETSTATE message. This causes the button to be depressed:
SendMessage (hwndButton, BM_SETSTATE, 1, 0) ;

Check Boxes:A check box is a square box with text; the text usually appears to the right of the check box. (If you include the BS_LEFTTEXT style when creating the button, the text appears to the left; you'll probably want to combine this style with BS_RIGHT to right-justify the text.) Check boxes are usually incorporated in an application to allow a user to select options. The check box commonly functions as a toggle switch: clicking the box once causes a check mark to appear; clicking again toggles the check mark off

The two most common styles for a check box are BS_CHECKBOX and BS_AUTOCHECKBOX. When you use the BS_CHECKBOX style, you must set the check mark yourself by sending the control a BM_SETCHECK message.

The two most common styles for a check box are BS_CHECKBOX and BS_AUTOCHECKBOX. When you use the BS_CHECKBOX style, you must set the check mark yourself by sending the control a BM_SETCHECK message.

SendMessage (hwndButton, BM_SETCHECK, 1, 0) ;

Radio Buttons:A radio button is named after the row of buttons that were once quite common on car radios. Each button on a car radio is set for a different radio station, and only one button can be pressed at a time. In dialog boxes, groups of radio buttons are conventionally used to indicate mutually exclusive options. Unlike check boxes, radio buttons do not work as togglesthat is, when you click a radio button a second time, its state remains unchanged.

The radio button looks very much like a check box except that it contains a little circle rather than a box. A heavy dot within the circle indicates that the radio button has been checked. The radio button has the window style BS_RADIOBUTTON or BS_AUTORADIOBUTTON, but the latter is used only in dialog boxes When you receive a WM_COMMAND message from a radio button, you should display its check by sending it a BM_SETCHECK message with wParam equal to 1: SendMessage (hwndButton, BM_SETCHECK, 1, 0) ; For all other radio buttons in the same group, you can turn off the checks by sending them BM_SETCHECK messages with wParam equal to 0:

Group Boxes The group box, which has the BS_GROUPBOX style, is an oddity in the button class. It neither processes mouse or keyboard input nor sends WM_COMMAND messages to its parent. The group box is a rectangular outline with its window text at the top. Group boxes are often used to enclose other button controls.

Changing the Button Text:You can change the text in a button (or in any other window) by calling SetWindowText: SetWindowText (hwnd, pszString) ; where hwnd is a handle to the window whose text is being changed and pszString is a pointer to a null-terminated string. For a normal window, this text is the text of the caption bar. For a button control, it's the text displayed with the button. Visible and Enabled Buttons:To receive mouse and keyboard input, a child window must be both visible (displayed) and enabled. When a child window is visible but not enabled, Windows displays the text in gray rather than black.

If you don't include WS_VISIBLE in the window class when creating the child window, the child window will not be displayed until you make a call to ShowWindow: ShowWindow (hwndChild, SW_SHOWNORMAL) ; But if you include WS_VISIBLE in the window class, you don't need to call ShowWindow. However, you can hide the child window by this call to ShowWindow: ShowWindow (hwndChild, SW_HIDE) ;

You can determine if a child window is visible by a call to IsWindowVisible (hwndChild) ;

You can also enable and disable a child window. By default, a window is enabled. You can disable it by calling EnableWindow (hwndChild, FALSE) ;

Controls and Colors:wndclass.hbrBackground = (HBRUSH) GetStockObject (WHITE_BRUSH) ;

The Button Colors:COLOR_BTNFACE is used for the main surface color of the push buttons and the background color of the others. (This is also the system color used for dialog boxes and message boxes.)

For push buttons, COLOR_BTNTEXT is used for the text color; for the others it's COLOR_WINDOWTEXT. Several other system colors are also used for various parts of the button designs.
SetBkColor (hdc, GetSysColor (COLOR_BTNFACE)) ; SetTextColor (hdc, GetSysColor (COLOR_WINDOWTEXT))

The Scroll Bar Class

window scroll bars have a fixed width, Windows uses the full rectangle dimensions given in the CreateWindow call (or later in the MoveWindow call) to size the scroll bar controls. You can make long, thin scroll bar controls or short,scrollbar controls.
If you want to create scroll bar controls that have the same dimensions as window scroll bars, you can use GetSystemMetrics to obtain the height of a horizontal scroll bar: GetSystemMetrics (SM_CYHSCROLL) ; or the width of a vertical scroll bar: GetSystemMetrics (SM_CXVSCROLL) ;

The scroll bar window style identifiers SBS_LEFTALIGN, SBS_RIGHTALIGN, SBS_TOP ALIGN, and SBS_BOTTOMALIGN are documented to give standard dimensions to scroll bars. However, these styles work only for scroll bars in dialog boxes. The difference is that window scroll bars use a handle to the main window as the first parameter and SB_VERT or SB_HORZ as the second parameter The system color named COLOR_SCROLLBAR is no longer used for scroll bars. The end buttons and thumb are based on COLOR_BTNFACE, COLOR_BTNHILIGHT, COLOR_BTNSHADOW, COLOR_BTNTEXT

The Listbox Class:-

A list box is a collection of text strings displayed as a scrollable columnar list within a rectangle. A program can add or remove strings in the list by sending messages to the list box window procedure. The list box control sends WM_COMMAND messages to its parent window when an item in the list is selected. The parent window can then determine which item has been selected

A list box can be either single selection or multiple selection. The latter allows the user to select more than one item from the list box. When a list box has the input focus, it displays a dashed line surrounding an item in the list box. This cursor does not indicate the selected item in the list box. The selected item is indicated by highlighting, which displays the item in reverse video.

List Box Styles The Windows header files define a list box style called LBS_STANDARD that includes the most commonly used styles. It is defined as (LBS_NOTIFY LBS_SORT WS_VSCROLL WS_BORDER)

You can also use the WS_SIZEBOX and WS_CAPTION identifiers, but these will allow the user to resize the list box and to move it around its parent's client area.
The width of a list box should accommodate the width of the longest string plus the width of the scroll bar. You can get the width of the vertical scroll bar using GetSystemMetrics (SM_CXVSCROLL) ;

Putting Strings in the List Box:If you use the LBS_SORT style (or if you are placing strings in the list box in the order that you want them to appear), the easiest way to fill up a list box is with the LB_ADDSTRING message: SendMessage (hwndList, LB_ADDSTRING, 0, (LPARAM) szString) ;

If you do not use LBS_SORT, you can insert strings into your list box by specifying an index value with LB_INSERTSTRING
SendMessage (hwndList, LB_INSERTSTRING, iIndex, (LPARAM) szString) ;

You can delete a string from the list box by specifying the index value with the LB_DELETESTRING message:

SendMessage (hwndList, LB_DELETESTRING, iIndex, 0) ; You can clear out the list box by using LB_RESETCONTENT: SendMessage (hwndList, LB_RESETCONTENT, 0, 0) ;