Microsoft Visual Basic 2010 Step by Step eBook

114 Part I Getting Started with Microsoft Visual Basic 2010

any form as a dialog box, including a form created by one of the standard dialog box

controls that Visual Studio provides. The second statement in the event procedure

assigns the color that the user selected in the dialog box to the ForeColor property of

the Label1 object. You might remember Label1 from earlier in this chapter—it’s the

label box you used to display the current time and date on the form. You’ll use the

color returned from the color dialog box to set the color of the text in the label.

Note that the color dialog box can be used to set the color of any UI element that

supports color. Other possibilities include the background color of the form, the colors

of shapes on the form, and the foreground and background colors of objects.

3. Click the Save All button on the Standard toolbar to save your changes.

Controlling Color Choices by Setting Color Dialog Box Properties

If you want to further customize the color dialog box, you can control what color

choices the dialog box presents to the user when the dialog box opens. You can adjust

these color settings by selecting the ColorDialog1 object and using the Properties

window, or by setting properties by using program code before you display the dialog

box with the ShowDialog method. Table 4-3 describes the most useful properties of

the ColorDialog control. Each property should be set with a value of True to enable the

option or False to disable the option.

TABLE 4-3 ColorDialog Control Properties

Property Meaning

AllowFullOpen Set to True to enable the Define Custom Colors button in the

dialog box.

AnyColor Set to True if the user can select any color shown in the dialog box.

FullOpen Set to True if you want to display the Custom Colors area when the

dialog box first opens.

ShowHelp Set to True if you want to enable the Help button in the dialog box.

SolidColorOnly Set to True if you want the user to select only solid colors (dithered

colors—those that are made up of pixels of different colors—are

disabled).

Now you’ll run the Menu program and experiment with the menus and dialog boxes you’ve

created.

Run the Menu program

Tip The complete Menu program is located in the C:\Vb10sbs\Chap04\Menu folder.