Windows Common Controls

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Windows Common Controls
The use of windowing environment has changed the day to day usage of the computer.
Now a person can easily use computer without much expertise with the help of windows.
The window environment of an operating system is also known as the Graphical User
Interfaces (GUI). The user is not required to remember the commands to perform some
operation (either normal or administrative). All the operations can be done with some
mouse clicks over few buttons or other window controls. In this paper, we will talk about
the different windows controls of Microsoft Windows operating system. Microsoft has
designed many controls which assist us to accomplish certain task easily using the
computer. Let us discuss some of them one by one.
Edit Box Control

This is a simplest window control used to enter some text in to it. The edit box control
may be of two different styles – single line control or multi-line control. In single line
control only one line text can be entered. The line will be assumed finished once you
press ENTER button of the keyboard. In contrast, multi-line edit box control can
accommodate multiple-line text in to it.
Button Control
There exist many type of button controls as written under.
• Push button control
• Radio button control
• Check box control
Push Button Control

It is rectangular size window control that can be pressed using the mouse button. This
type of button control is used to send a message to the application software to perform
some designated task. The user defined labels/ bitmap can also be placed on top of the
push button controls.
Radio Button Control

These buttons are round in shape. The selected button shows a black dot inside the
circular shape of the button. These type of buttons are used to select one out of many
choices. So if there are four radio buttons and they are grouped together, only one button
can be selected at a time. The selected button ID is sent to the application software for
the proper action. It is called a radio button because it resembles the concept of buttons in
a radio set that are used to select a particular radio station. A particular radio station can
be tuned at a particular time.
Check Box Control

This window control is similar to the radio button control but it differs in selection
criteria. This control is used to select multiple choices out of the given list. For example,
if there are four check boxes, user can select zero, one, two, three or all four at a time.
The selected choices are sent to the application software for the processing.
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List View Control

This window control is used to present a comprehensive list of items. Each item in the list
can have an icon and text associated with it. Each item can have other supplementary
information also attached with the item. It can present the list in four different styles.
These styles are popularly knows as ‘Tiles’, ‘Icons’, ‘List’, ‘Details’. In ‘Tiles’ mode, the
items are shown in a multiple columns with large icon and other information displayed
side by side. In ‘Icons’ mode, the small iconic image for each item and the primary brief
info is displayed. In the ‘List’ mode, the icon and the corresponding primary text is
shown. In ‘Details’ mode, the complete information of each item along with its icon is
presented row-wise.
Animate Control
This is a control which basically adds glamour to the look and feel of the window based
applications. This is a rectangular control. An AVI (audio video interleaved ) object can
be attached with this control either at the time of creation or the runtime. This control
plays the AVI file when the application software generate ‘play’ command for it. This
control presently does not support sound so use only video files without the audio.
Progress Bar Control

This is a common control of the Microsoft windows operating system. It is a passive
control. It generally does not require user input. It is used to give the feedback to the user
about the status of the completeness of some task. It is very useful for the user as user is
given status of the completeness and the idea of probable remaining time.
Slider Control
It is also called track bars. These controls are used to select a particular value from a
given range. The best real life example is the equalizer knobs of your stereo system. The
knob of the slider can be moved over the given range using the mouse to select the
appropriate value.
Tab Control
If you want to display multiple pages of information, you can either do it with separate
dialog window for each page or on a single dialog window using the tab control. These
tabs can be selected by mouse to display the concerned page of information either for
viewing or editing.
Tool Tip Control

This is the smallest and I hope, the simplest window control in the Microsoft operating
system. These small rectangular box size windows are used to display help text related to
some other controls available in the application software. When user places the mouse
cursor over some control and waits for few milliseconds, the tool-tip window appears
with the help text. It automatically disappears once the mouse is moved.
We have covered few controls from the exhaustive list of controls supported by the
Microsoft windows. But the controls discussed here are most common controls used by
most of the application software.

Windows Common Controls

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Saturn Software Mills

Visit for more technical article http://www.saturnsoftmills.com

Windows Common Controls

Edit Box Control

Push Button Control

Radio Button Control

Check Box Control

List View Control

Progress Bar Control

Tool Tip Control

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