Windows.XP.in.a.Nutshell.1002005.2Ed [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

A
listbox
is a list of items from which you can choose one or many. There are
four common types of listboxes:

Standard listbox

A simple listbox is a rectangular control that contains one or more
entries. If there are more entries than can be displayed in the space
allotted, scrollbars will appear as well. Click an entry to select
it. If the listbox allows multiple items to be selected
simultaneously, hold down the Ctrl key while clicking or pressing the
spacebar to select additional items, one-by-one, or use Shift-click
to select a range of items (see Figure 3-13).

Figure 3-15. This listbox shows the bitmap files in your Windows folder, from which you can choose one to be your Desktop background image

Use the arrow keys to move up and down the list. Type a letter to
jump to the first entry that begins with that letter; if there are a
lot of items, you can type several letters, quickly in succession, to
jump to the first item that begins with those letters.

Drop-down listbox

A
drop-down
listbox (see Figure 3-14) works much like a standard
listbox, except that only the currently selected entry is shown.
Click the down arrow to open the list and choose another item.
Drop-down listboxes never allow multiple selections.

Figure 3-16. Drop-down listboxes work much like standard listboxes, except that they consume less screen real estate

Shortcuts

With the focus on a drop-down listbox, press the down arrow key to
open the list, the arrow keys to navigate, and then the Tab key to
jump to the next control, which will close the list automatically
(press Esc to close the list without selecting a new item). If you
press Enter to commit your selection, though, it might activate the
default button (see "Buttons",
Earlier in this chapter).

Combo box

A
combo box is a hybrid between an input
field and a drop-down listbox. You can type just like in an ordinary
input field, or you can click the down arrow to choose an item from
the list. If you click an item, that item's caption
will be placed into the text field, at which point you can edit or
move on. Often, a drop-down list contains a history of previous
entries you've made into a text entry field; the
Address Bar is essentially a glorified combo box.

The keyboard shortcuts are the same as for drop-down listboxes, shown
above, and input fields (discussed earlier in this chapter).
Additionally, you can begin typing, and then press the down arrow,
and the first entry in the list that matches what
you've typed (if any) will be selected
automatically.

ListView (commonly known as Details)

An enhanced version of the standard listbox, the



ListView
control is what appears in folder windows and File Open/Save dialogs.
It's commonly used to display lists of files, but
it's not unusual to see this presentation for other
types of data as well (see Figure 3-15).

Figure 3-17. ListView controls, like the one used for Explorer's Details View, are enhanced listboxes with multiple columns of information

The main advantage of this control is that it supports multiple,
resizable columns, each of which has a header that can usually be
clicked to sort the contents of the list (click again to reverse the
sort order). Drag the lines dividing the headers to resize the width
of columns or drag the headers to rearrange them. Double-click on
column header separators to size columns automatically to the widest
contents.

See Chapter 2 for more information on working
with the folder window. Since folders use the common ListView
control, almost anything that works with a folder will work with
other ListView controls. For example, in addition to selecting
multiple items with Ctrl and Shift, as described for standard
listboxes, above, you can usually select multiple items by drawing a
rubber band with your mouse as well.