Add an event handler to each control on a form at runtime VB6

dynamicevent handlinglook-and-feelvb6

I have a VB6 application where I'd like to have a consistent behavior among its controls application-wide. One of the behaviors, for example, would be highlighting a text box when it gains focus and removing the highlight when it loses focus. I'd like this to happen on every form.

What I'm trying to do is have one sub procedure that can be called by all forms when they load that will make this behavior happen. That way, I don't have to manually code for each individual text box to make it highlight.

I've tried getting VB6 to attach an event handler to a control at runtime but it just barks at me. I come from a .Net background so maybe I'm approaching it wrong for VB6. But how can I get this desired behavior without having to manually code it for every control?

Best Answer

You could also "Subclass" Your TextBox Controls Using WithEvents. The advantage here is that you can code the highlighting and de-highlighting in one place without having to go through and replace all of your existing controls (as Scott suggests).

The downside is that you have to add code to the Form_Load event of all your forms to "register" the controls on that form. However, even this should not be too bad if you want to apply the technique to every control; in that case, you just need to write a function that loops through the .Controls collection of a form and registers each control. Then just call this function in each form's Form_Load event.

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VB6 Changing colors for every control on a form

The .frm files are simply standard ANSI text files. A background color property of a control would look like this:-

BackColor       =   &H80000005&

(Note the above is a system color but you can specify the RGB color using by using the lower 3 bytes and leaving the high byte 0).

A control such a Label would look like this:-

Begin VB.Label Label1 
  Caption         =   "Hello:"
  Height          =   285
  Left            =   90
  TabIndex        =   3
  Top             =   480
  Width           =   1305
End

So that task could be done lexically by parsing the .frm files and inserting (or replacing) the BackColor attribute line.

Edit:

Useful link posted in comments by MarkJ : Form Description Properties

Best Answer

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VB6 Changing colors for every control on a form

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