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Questions tagged [common-controls]

A set of extended windows desktop controls like TreeView, ListView, ProgressBar and TrackBar. Available as ActiveX mscomctl.ocx library and very popular in Visual Basic and Delphi. Superseeded by current ui libraries but still working today.

The Windows Common Controls are a set of standardized user interface components. They originated in Windows 3.11 and were implemented by COMMCTRL.DLL (later named COMCTL32.DLL in Windows 95). Information about the history of the common controls is available here.

Notable controls (which where fancy in the 1990s) are:

  • TreeView - display hierarchical data
  • ListView - display lists with icons (comparable to the lists in the windows explorer application)
  • ProgressBar - a component which displays application progress
  • StatusBar - a way to display status messages in a desktop application window.

MSDN has a complete list of the provided controls.

The controls are distributed with the operating system and coupled to the .

To maintain backwards compatibility, several versions of the controls may exist on a given system. Applications have to specify by an application manifest, which version of the controls should be used.

Nowadays the controls still work, but are replaced by modern user interface toolkits (like or )

102 questions
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Why would FillRect not draw when LineTo succeeds?

I am trying to change the background color of a DateTimePicker, but my question is unrelated to what i'm trying to do. I am catching a window's WM_PAINT message, letting the default drawing implementation happen (i.e. the one inside ComCtrl.dll),…
Ian Boyd
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Could not find file 'Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls, Version=6.0.0.0, Culture=*, PublicKeyToken=6595b64144ccf1df,

I'm trying to integrate this library into my application. At first it crashed with Unable to find an entry point named 'TaskDialogIndirect' in DLL 'ComCtl32'. so I uncommented
Arsen Zahray
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Changing font in CHOOSECOLOR dialog

I'm using the Windows common controls CHOOSECOLOR dialog, but on Win 7 it sticks out like a sore thumb as it still uses the 'old' Tahoma font. Is there a fairly easy way of getting it to use Segoe UI or some other font? If it matters, I'm using…
Roddy
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Change TToolBar background color

I got a problem, that I can't normally change the background color (e.g. clwhite) of TToolBar with its property ToolBar.Color. I'm not very experienced in Delphi and I find out two possible solutions, but still I'd like to know, how to change it…
Triber
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Common controls are not properly painted when I resize window

INTRODUCTION: I am creating tab control with child dialog boxes as pages. I have Visual Styles enabled via #pragma comment. I have also called InitCommonControlsEx and #pragma comment( lib, "comctl32.lib" ) as well. Initially, when window loads,…
AlwaysLearningNewStuff
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Imagelist with alpha blend icons loses Transparency

Here is (more or less) a related question: Delphi - Populate an imagelist with icons at runtime 'destroys' transparency. I have tested @TOndrej answer. But it seems I need to have visual styles (XP Manifest) enabled for this to work (version 6.0 of…
kobik
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No Balloon Tooltip Close Buttons in Windows Server 2008

My program uses balloon notification bubbles within the app to guide the user, in Windows XP the balloon windows have little 'X's in the top right corner to close the window when clicked, and also the window closes if you click anywhere inside of it…
Kyle V.
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Does LVS_EX_DOUBLEBUFFER correctly not double buffer when running on a remote session?

One is supposed to use double buffering when running locally, but to not use double buffering when the window is on a remote session, if one wants to have the best performance of each mode. The ListView control has an extended style,…
Billy ONeal
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Single-select Win32 ListView (Common Controls)

I'm using the ListView control from Common Controls 6.0 in C++ and I need the ListView to be single-select only. All of the higher level controls have this feature (e.g. .Net and Qt), but I imagine they are based on this control deep down somewhere.…
Miquella
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Are native Windows Controls still used in .NET GUIs?

Is the stuff that is displayed when you create a GUI with WinForms or WPF still based on the native controls like Common Controls or any of the system provided Window Classes or is everything that is displayed "custom" drawn by the framework? Note:…
Martin Ba
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ListItems in ListView with empty text

I've got an old VB6 program that hasn't changed in a while but now has a new behavior. I'm thinking a common component was upgraded from underneath it. Here are the details. I've got a standard ListView control in SmallIcon mode. Code…
tcarvin
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Disabling visual styles in manifest while retaining Common Controls functionality

I'm using pure WINAPI, and need to send the TB_GETMETRICS message. However, that message only works if you add a manifest file to your application with a reference to Common Controls version 6.0. I added it, the message is working, but now my…
stelonix
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WINAPI - Set background & text color of a combo box dropdown

So I was trying to set a ComboBox's background & text color using Common-Controls & WINAPI. I did manage to set the background & text color of the combo box itself, but the colors of its dropdown list remain the same. Here is pretty much what I…
aviad1
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How do I get a reference to a Win7 library from a common controls dialog hook?

I am implementing an OFNHookProc to instrument a common controls GetOpenFileName() dialog on Windows 7. My instrumentation is written in C++. Things work fine until the user selects a Library (like Documents or Pictures). When this happens, I get…
Alex Jordan
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Why are SC_HSCROLL and SC_VSCROLL seem to be switched in WM_SYSCOMMAND?

I know it's a really old stuff, but I'm wrecking my brain over it. Does anyone know why this is happening? Say, when the scrollbar mouse click notification is propagated through WM_NCHITTEST -> WM_NCLBUTTONDOWN -> WM_SYSCOMMAND -> WM_HSCROLL or…
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