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 Updated! v1.4 21 March 2000
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Posted VB6 version.
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Fixed bugs in Images Property Page: when two images were swapped, the keys did not
move with them and sometimes the key was not saved for images. Also put the images
into their own control so you can navigate them with the cursor keys.
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Fixed control bug - attempt to refer to the first item in the ImageList by key caused
a subscript out of range error.
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Updated! v1.2 21 March 1999
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When loading an icon, the control now chooses the icon resource with the size most
closely matching the image list size. Previously, the control always picked the
resource at the default system icon size if that existed - causing the stretching
problem the control was supposed to solve!
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Multiple files can now be selected together when adding images. A stupid omission from
the last version!
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Image Keys can now be set up in the property page and are persisted in the control's
PropertyBag. The control's property page also has a toggle to allow keys to be automatically
generated based on the filenames being added - very useful!
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Allow load of .GIF, .CUR and .ANI files as well as .BMP and .ICO. For animated
cursors, you can choose whether to load just the first frame or import
all frames.
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When adding a bitmap, the control can now automatically determine the transparent
colour from the top-left hand pixel of the image. However, you can still set it
manually, although now there is the assistance of a colour picker Common Dialog to
do it rather than having to remember the RGB values yourself!
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Bugs causing the control to crash when buttons pressed in the property page at
an unexpected point and also to place the images in the wrong order in the control
have all been removed.
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Resource leak when adding icons fixed. (Call DestroyIcon or DestroyCursor
as appropriate rather than calling DeleteObject)
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Source Code Note
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This OCX is a binary compatible component which works with all other samples.
If you compile your own copy of this OCX yourself please make sure you change
the name. See disclaimer and license for more details.
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Overview
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As a number of my controls require image list support (Rebar and Toolbar
control, Tab Control, S-Grid,
Icon Menu Control, ActiveX Popup Menu DLL,
Owner Drawn ComboEx Control and the
Owner Drawn Combo and List box Control), it was about
time I provided an Image List control to support them, so you don't have to distribute
590kb of COMCTL32.OCX just to get images in your app.
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Well here it is. I completed the control, and it has a full design-time interface (see above)
with a number of new features which you will probably find very useful if you're used to the
MS version. But, having done it I was alarmed to discover than my OCX was 131kb!
The problem is with this control is you need nice serialisation code and property page support
otherwise it isn't any use. But the penalty of this is that you are bound to end up with
something heavier than if you go the code-only route.
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Another option if you are interested in lean, serious code is to get all the functionality
from a class, which will add just 30kb of code to your project. There's no subclassing or
hooky API calls, so there's no danger of making your project unstable in the IDE by adding it.
You can load all the icons in one go from a picture strip containing all the images in series (stored as a file or a resource bitmap).
The control version lets you create a picture strip and save it and then you ditch the control
and use the class instead. A bit of an expensive use of a control, but anyway...
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Note that this control isn't a direct replacement for the Common Controls version. You can't
directly attach it to a TreeView or ListView etc and get that to work. It does, however,
directly attach to all the vbAccelerator controls that require an ImageList (note that they
also support the MS ImageList). Just pass the return value of the hIml property to the
relevant ImageList method.
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Features
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The features of this image list control are:
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- Add all images at the same time from a picture containing a strip of images.
Also, the image list has a method which creates a picture strip from icons added in.
Images can be loaded easily from files, resources, bitmap handles or VB Picture objects.
- No icon size/colour depth restriction. If you have icons that are 24x24 in millions of
colours, the ImageList will load them, unlike the VB/COM StdPicture object which first stretches
them to 32x32, reduces the colour depth to 16 colours and then squashes them back to 24x24!
Updated! the previous version could fail to pick the correct icon size from multi-resource
icons, leading to stretching or squashing. The closest size match is now used.
- Specify the colour depth the ImageList should run in. Lower colour depths mean less
resource usage, higher depths mean better icons!
- At design time, you can clear the images, or change their order without having to add/
remove each one separately.
- Image draw method supports drawing icons in normal, selected, dithered with specified colour
and disabled modes.
- Swap or make copies of images in the image list.
- Get a real API hIcon from any image in the image list, regardless of what format it was
originally added in. This function will make for a great icon editor! Just remember to
call DestroyIcon on the hIcon returned when you've finished with it...
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New! Add .CUR (cursor) and .ANI (animated cursor) files to the Image List. If
you import an animated cursor, you get the option of importing all frames or just the
first one.
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New! A much better user interface for the control version.
- Set up keys at design time - optionally you can have the key automatically set based on the filename
of the image you are adding, which can be a great time saver.
- Add multiple files from the File Open dialog.
- Choose whether the control automatically determines the transparent colour of bitmaps
you are adding, or choose the transparent colour using a Colour Picker dialog (rather than
having to remember the correct RGB value..)
To get a feel for the methods and use of the image list, download one of the sample files
and check it out.
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Documentation
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Documentation for the Image List control is available in RTF format. This documentation was
created with the Active X Documenter, which is also available
for download.
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 Click here to download/view the Image List control method documentation
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