Dialog control styles
The installer dialog boxes in InstallMate are internally implemented as Windows dialog resources. Among other things, this means that you can use the standard Windows styles to change the appearance and behavior of the controls. This topic discusses the standard control styles that apply to the dialog controls that you create on the Dialogs project page.
Notes
- Although you can set most control styles for all control types, not all controls respond to all styles.
- Some control styles have a different, or no, effect on Windows XP with visual themes enabled. They behave as documented on Windows XP without visual themes, and on earlier Windows versions.
Standard control styles
The following standard control styles are available. They are listed in alphabetical order.
| Control style | Description |
|---|---|
| Border | Setting this style draws a border around the control; clearing it omits the border. Note: For some controls the Border style has the same effect as the Client edge style when used in dialog boxes. This is because Windows silently converts the WS_BORDER style to WS_EX_CLIENTEDGE when it creates a dialog box from a template. InstallMate imitates this behavior in order to provide a faithful preview of the dialog box. |
| Client edge | Setting this style makes the control appear sunken; clearing it displays it flush with its parent dialog. A sunken control has a simulated 3D border. The Client edge effect is more pronounced than the Sunken effect. |
| Don't mirror | Setting this style keeps the control's orientation as it is and does not mirror it for languages that use a right-to-left (RTL) reading order; clearing it mirrors the control if the parent dialog is mirrored for RTL languages. This option only has effect for languages that use an RTL reading order, such as Arabic and Hebrew; for other languages it is ignored. |
| Enabled | Setting this style enables the control initially; clearing it disables the control. An enabled control accepts user input; a disabled control does not and appears grayed out. You can change the enabled status of the control at installation time by specifying a Condition for the control or by using a Set Window State action. |
| Group | Setting this style designates the control as the start of a new control group; clearing it makes it part of the current group. Controls within a group can be navigated using the arrow keys; they are mostly used for RadioButton controls. To create a group, the first control of the group and the first control following the group must have their Group attributes checked; the intervening controls must have their Group attributes cleared. |
| Sunken | Setting this style makes the control appear sunken; clearing it displays it flush with its parent dialog. A sunken control has a simulated 3D border. The Sunken effect is more subtle than the Client edge effect. |
| Tab stop | Setting this style makes the control participate in the tabbing order of the parent dialog box; clearing will cause the control to be skipped. This option only has effect for controls that accept user input; other controls are always skipped. |
| Transparent | Setting this style makes the control's caption background transparent; clearing it displays it with an opaque caption background. A transparent background is useful if the control appears on top of another control that serves as the background, for example a Bitmap control. |
| Visible | Setting this style makes the control initially visible; clearing it hides the control. You can change the visibility status of the control at installation time by using a Set Window State action. |