Bitmap control

A Bitmap control displays bitmap images. The InstallMate dialog editor shows the selected bitmap image in the control. To display a bitmap image in a Bitmap control, you must add the desired bitmap on the Bitmaps project page, then set the control's Bitmap attribute to the name of the desired bitmap image.

Tip: To change the tab and Z-order of a control in a dialog box (i.e., the order in which they are drawn and how they appear "on top" of each other), select the control in the dialog/control tree in the left pane on the Dialogs project page, then use Ctrl+Up and Ctrl+Down to move the control up or down in the order. These keystrokes are shortcuts for the Move Up and Move Down commands on the control's context menu.

Attributes

The following attributes and options are available.

Attribute Description
Control name Enter the internal name for the control. This name is for use in InstallMate only; it is not used in the installer. All control names must be unique within their parent dialog box.
Control ID

Select a control ID from the drop-down list or type a numerical ID to use for this control. All controls within a dialog must have different control IDs. For most controls, you should select Automatic; for PushButton controls, one of the standard IDxxx values is generally recommended.

See Dialog control IDs for an explanation of the available control IDs and their usage.

Bitmap image

Enter the name of the bitmap image to display in the control, or click ... (browse) to open the Select Bitmap Image dialog that allows you to select a bitmap from the project's bitmaps.

Tip: The Bitmap image attribute is localizable; you can use different images for different languages if you want.

Localized Check this box to localize the Bitmap image field and use different bitmap images for different languages.
Display mode

Select the desired bitmap display mode from the drop-down list. The following choices are available:

Display mode Description
Stretch Stretch or shrink the bitmap image to fit the size of the Bitmap control. This might result in a distorted image.
Centered Center the bitmap image inside the Bitmap control. If the bitmap image is larger than the available control size, it will be clipped; if smaller, the remaining control area will be filled with the color of the bitmap image's top-left pixel.
Actual size Resize the control to fit the bitmap image's size.

The size of bitmap images is determined by the number of horizontal and vertical pixels that they contain. However, the size of Bitmap controls is expressed in "dialog units", which are based on the font used in their parent dialog. Different dialog fonts result in different dialog unit to pixel size mappings. As a result, a bitmap image that fits exactly when one font is used, might no longer fit with a different font.

For the best result in most situations, we recommend using the Centered option and a bitmap image that is somewhat larger than required for the Bitmap control.

Note: Even if you use the same dialog font throughout, the actual font at installation time might vary, in particular if the dialog font is set to MS Shell Dlg or MS Sans Serif. Furthermore, fonts such as Tahoma and Verdana that are used on Windows 2000 and later, are not available on earlier Windows versions. On those versions, another font such as Arial or MS Sans Serif is substituted, which leads to slightly different dialog and control sizes.

Don't scale
for high DPI

Check this box to disable automatic scaling of the bitmap image when running on high-DPI displays (> 96 DPI); clear the box to allow automatic scaling.

It is recommended that you do not check this box, because the automatic scaling ensures that the bitmap image looks "about right" even on high-DPI displays such as 216 DPI laptop screens on which they would otherwise look too small.

Enabled
Tab stop
Group
Border
Sunken
Client edge
Visible
Transparent
Don't mirror
These are all standard control styles; see Dialog control styles for a description.
Condition

Enter the display condition for the control or leave empty to display the control unconditionally. See Dialog control conditions for more information.

Note: This has no effect on Bitmap controls.

Related topics

Dialogs, Working with attribute panes