Using Dialogs

Dialogs are a user-friendly way to solicit application control. As your application executes, you can make a dialog box appear on the screen and the user can click on a dialog box control to enter data or choose what happens next.

With the dialog routines provided with Visual Fortran, you can add dialog boxes to your application. These routines define dialog boxes and their controls (scroll bars, buttons, and so on), and call your subroutines to respond to user selections.

There are two types of dialog boxes:

• Modal dialog boxes, which you can use with any Fortran project type, including Fortran Windows, Fortran QuickWin (multiple doc.), Fortran Standard Graphics (QuickWin single doc.), Fortran Console, Fortran DLL, and Fortran Static library project types.
• Modeless dialog boxes, which are typically used with the Fortran Windows project type.

When your program displays a modal dialog box (any project type), the user must explicitly enter data and close the dialog box before your application resumes execution.

When your program displays a modeless dialog box, your application continues executing. Unlike a modal dialog box, the user can switch between the modeless dialog box and the other windows in the application.

There are two steps to make a dialog:

1. Specify the appearance of the dialog box and the names and properties of the controls it contains.
2. Write an application that activates those controls by recognizing and responding to user selections.

This section covers the following topics:

• Using the Resource Editor to Design a Dialog
• Writing a Dialog Application
• Dialog Routines
• Dialog Controls
• Using Dialog Controls
• Using ActiveX Controls