Chapter 5: Common Controls and Windows CE - Programming Microsoft Windows Ce Net 3Rd [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Chapter 5: Common Controls and Windows CE

Overview

As Microsoft Windows matured as an operating system, it became apparent that the basic controls provided by Windows were insufficient for the sophisticated user interfaces that users demanded. Microsoft developed a series of additional controls, called common controls, for their internal applications and later made the dynamic-link library (DLL) containing the controls available to application developers. Starting with Microsoft Windows 95 and Microsoft Windows NT 3.5, the common control library was bundled with the operating system. (Although this hasn't stopped Microsoft from making interim releases of the DLL as the common control library was enhanced.) With each release of the common control DLL, new controls and new features are added to old controls. As a group, the common controls are less mature than the standard Windows controls and therefore show greater differences between implementations across the various versions of Windows. These differences aren't just between Microsoft Windows CE and other versions of Windows, but also between Windows Me, Windows 2000, and Windows XP. The functionality of the common controls in Windows CE tracks most closely with the common controls delivered with Windows 98, although not all of the Windows 98 features are supported.

It isn't the goal of this chapter to cover in depth all the common controls. That would take an entire book. Instead, I'll cover the controls and features of controls the Windows CE programmer will most often need when writing Windows CE applications. I'll start with the command bar and menu bar controls and then look at the month calendar and time and date picker controls. Finally, I'll finish up with the list view control. By the end of the chapter, you might not know every common control inside and out, but you will be able to see how the common controls work in general. And you'll have the background to look at the documentation and understand the common controls not covered.