This section is the repositry for vbAccelerator's library of techniques and code.

• Common Dialogs
  • Common Dialog/Direct - A full no-code change replacement for COMDLG32.OCX as a VB ActiveX DLL 21 March 2000
    • Two code only solutions for displaying Common Dialogs - ditch those dependencies!
  • Centre a Common Dialog - the easy and the hard way! 10 October 1998
  • Common Dialog and Hooks - create a VB style New/Open Project dialog, and a File Open dialog with Picture Previews. A completely new and much better version courtesy of Mark Grimes. 21 March 2000
  • Common Dialog and Templates - If you have a resource compiler capable of creating dialogs, then this solution from Cayce Cochran will show you how.
  • Browsing for Folders - create a WinZip style Extract dialog!
• Subclassing without the crashes 25 August 1999
  • Detecting when another application is activated
  • Reliable Interception of WM_NCHITTEST messages you can use to create fake title bars and resize boxes.
  • Add Real Win32 Scroll bars to Forms, PictureBoxes and UserControls.
  • Passing command line parameters to an existing instance of your app, and making sure only one instance runs. 21 March 2000
  • Providing a MouseLeave event for a control. A helper for creating controls which track when the mouse is over them.
  • Creating and Responding to HotKeys.
  • Drawing Buttons, Option Boxes and Check Boxes with your own style.
  • Sophisticated Control over Window Sizing and Moving.
  • Keep Form Titlebars in Focus when ToolWindows are shown.
• Compression
  • Introduction to the freeware Info-ZIP libraries and using them with VB
    • Unzipping files, with a complete unzip application
    • Zipping files
  • Compressing and Expanding with the freeware zLib library in VB - sample from Benjamin Dowse.
• Threading
  • Multi-threading using classes in ActiveX EXEs
• Windows Hooks
  • vbAccelerator Hook Library - a DLL and source code library you can use to add low-level control to your applications.
  • vbAccelerator Accelerator Control - set up application-wide accelerators including ones you can't normally do from VB, e.g. Alt+Home and Alt+Left Arrow.
• INI file and Registry access with Class
  • An easy INI file class
  • Complete Registry control - demonstrates a Registry Editor in VB using my simple Registry class 21 March 2000
  • Find an OLE server's CLSID and executable from the registry 10 January 1999
  • Auto-starting applications using the registry Run and RunOnce sections
• Resource Files
  • Loading arbitrary data from resources in local or external libraries
  • Icons without forms and document association icons in VB.
• Collections, Dictionaries, IUnknown and IMalloc
  • malloc in VB? - a COM object you can use to call alloc, realloc and free!
  • Store Objects against a Control's Tag or ItemData property. Provides three techniques and compares performance: the VB way, using IMalloc and using IUnknown.
• User Control Support
  • vbAccelerator COM Support Library Another amazing release from Paul Wilde. VB6 and VB5 DLLs which allow you to create native collections and hook into low level run-time and design-time COM interfaces. If you want to create a truly professional VB control you need this library!
  • IPerPropertyBrowse DLL and Type Library from Paul Wilde. This excellent sample shows you how to respond to property browse events in the VB IDE and customise the available items to pick from. Full sample code shows how to create a drop-down list in the IDE Properties window to pick a control on the UserControl's parent form.
  • How to trap the Tab Key in a UserControl using IOLEInPlaceActiveObject. Demonstrates how seriously difficult it can be to do something which appears trivially easy.
  • Simpler UserControl Tab Trapping. This ActiveX DLL wraps up the awkward details of implementing IOLEInPlaceActiveObject, making it easier to implement yourself.
• A drop-in Most Recently Used (MRU) File List class
• Tiling Bitmaps into PictureBoxes, UserControls, Forms and MDI Form backgrounds 10 January 1999
• Customising Clipboard Use - find out exactly what's on the clipboard, create a Clipboard viewer application and Paste data in multiple formats, including your own customised ones. Also demonstrates how to Copy and Paste files in the same way as Explorer.
• Using Enumeration API methods in VB to find Fonts and Windows. 25 October 1998
• Windows and Windows Styles
  • Set a UserControl's BorderStyle by modifying its Window Style.
  • Set the Show In Taskbar property at run time using a Windows Hook to modify the forms style as it is created.
  • Changing window shapes
    • Creating Geometric Window Shapes
    • Creating Window Shapes from Bitmaps
• Graphics and GDI
  • Drawing Borders and Edges using the API DrawEdge Function
  • Text at any angle 21 March 1999
  • Simple but effective text animation effects using Kerning
  • Draw disabled, colourised and dithered icons with the DrawState GDI function
  • Reading .ICO files and resources in VB. This code demonstrates how to read an icon and all the constituent image types, not just the ones the standard APIs or VB allow you to.
  • Using Animated Cursors in VB. How to load from files and resources, and how to set an API cursor as a VB object's cursor.
  • Creating Single Pixel Dotted Lines and Dithering Areas.
• Splitter Code
  • A simple way of building splitters
  • Splitting for all types of forms, including MDI forms, by drawing on the Desktop DC
• Shell Projects
  • AppBar Class
    The AppBar class (65kb) from Paolo Giacomuzzi (paolo.giacomuzzi@usa.net, http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/9486), was recommended by a reader, and it was so good I had to get it for the site! This is a complete solution to creating those sliding, dockable shell toolbars like the Win95/NT Taskbar. All the properties you could want are exposed in a neat interface.
  • Shell an application and wait asynchronously for completion
  • Using ShellExecute from Visual Basic - start any document from its filename only
  • Get Icons for any file type in various sizes and load them into an ImageList
  • SysTray the easy way - no DLLs, just one VB form you can drop in with a simple interface to set the menus, icon and tooltip. 21 March 2000
• Create new GUIDs. Code from Dion Wiggins. Use the result for your own TypeLibs, or just as a useful numbers - a GUID has a practically unlimited 128 bit range plus as solid a guarantee as any that you won't ever generate a duplicate number, even across remote machines.
• NT Only
  • Use PSAPI.DLL to get a complete task list - exactly like the Task Manager list. Also demonstrates how to find memory usage for processes under NT.

• Hash tables and an new, faster and more flexible collection object which won't increment your object's reference count
• Sorting algorithms - Shell Sort and the Postman sort - a sort whose speed varies linearly (not exponentially) with sort size.
• Using XML to store self-describing data. Replace old-fashioned (already???) registry storage and INI files with this new and much-hyped technology!
  

About  Contribute  Send Feedback  Privacy

Copyright © 1998-2000, Steve McMahon ( steve@vbaccelerator.com). All Rights Reserved.
Last updated: 18 February 1999