Overview
Chapter 7, we looked at some of the standard controls that come with Microsoft Windows, including the button control, the check box, the radio button, the static text box, the list box, and the combo box. In this chapter, we'll look at a bunch of other controls—the common controls. These are included in a DLL named COMCTL32.DLL and the latest version of the DLL is 6.0. The common controls update all of the existing controls and add a variety of advanced new controls. Microsoft Visual C++ and Microsoft Foundation Class (MFC) library have added a great deal of support for these new controls.
Note | The version of COMCTL32.DLL installed on a system depends on the version of Windows and the version of Microsoft Internet Explorer. Windows 95 included a version of COMCTL32.DLL, but COMCTL32.DLL was not included in Windows NT 4.0. Subsequent versions of Windows (including Windows 2000 and Windows XP) include a recent version COMCTL32.DLL. Internet Explorer 3.0 and later included a version of COMCTL32.DLL.To be safe when targeting older systems, you should redistribute a recent version of COMCTL32.DLL as part of your installation. You can upgrade COMCTL32.DLL by installing the latest version of Internet Explorer. A component package that upgrades COMCTL32.DLL might also be available. Be sure to check the Microsoft Knowledge Base article "Redistribution of COMCTL32.DLL" (Q186176) and http://msdn.microsoft.com for the latest news on this subject. |