I am in the process of testing the codejock ActiveX controls for use in our VB6 app.  What are the alternatives to using the Designer Studio, if any (besides creating your menus/toolbars from scratch in code)?

Is there a way to create your controls using Designer Studio, then kick out the VB6 code necessary to create them?  I'm not sure we want to load a series of *.xcb files every time our users start the program and, like most, I guess I'd rather see the visual elements done in code.

Is it safe to use more than one CommandBar control per form in VB6?  I seem to be getting some unstable results when I try this.

What is the recommended way to enable/disable toolbar controls?  I've been trying to disable one control for the better part of a day, without any luck.  The controls are loaded using the LoadDesignerBars method.

I love the appearance of the codejock menus/toolbars although I think it's fair to say here that finding answers using the provided help files, tutorials, etc. has been difficult, to say the least.

Thanks for any help here!

Dan

The Designer Studio is nice, but there's no feature to export your design to the corresponding VB code.  This would be a nice feature request to submit.

Like you, I didn't want to manage all those XCB files, so I just create all my menus in code.  It's not as bad as you might think.  You may want to use the Designer Studio to help you "plan" your menu system.  After that, the code is pretty easy to create.

I've never tried using more than one CommandBars instance on a single form, but I have used multiple instances on different forms within the same application (no problems there).  Typically, you can create multiple toolbars or popup menus that are all hosted from the same CommandBars instance.

The intended way to enable/disable controls is in the 'Update' event for CommandBars.  This event is fired to update a command before it is displayed or accessed (or periodically fired for toolbar controls that are always displayed).

As for getting help, the best resource will be the sample projects.  If you have questions that can't be answered by the supplied documentation or projects, just post your questions here.  Codejock monitors these forums pretty closely and will typically give you feedback in a reasonable amount of time.

Thanks for your reply.

I agree, creating the menus in code isn't so bad. 

Not sure I understand ImageManager. I've read elsewhere here that I can load our icons into ImageManager programatically.  Does this mean that after loading them, I don't need to do it again?  What I'm picturing is a control that stores the images for later retrieval when starting the app. I don't need to load them every time I start the app do I?  Again, I've looked, but can't find any documentation about how to use ImageManager.  One of the samples (can't remember the name) uses an ImageList, but not sure that's the right way to go.  Since I'm at the beginning of this process, please point me in the right direction here...

After a few hit and misses, I was able to load icons fairly easily.  Using an existing resource file to store the image works fine (and also avoids have to reload/duplicate).

I continue to have a problem briefly mentioned earlier:

We have a VB6 form which hosts a fairly complex series of multiple tabs/sub tabs, etc.  I am using the codejock tabcontrol for this purpose.  A few of these different tabs require a control to help the user navigate through some database records.  Because I can't figure out how you would create say, 6 different toolbars from one instance of the CommandBar instance AND have each toolbar show up on a different tab, I have instead tried dropping the CommandBar control in six different picturebox controls to see if I could make that work.

Three times now I have done this and closed the code thinking that it was working.  When I've later gone back to reopen the code however, VB crashes when I merely try and open the form to view it (something about "could not read memory...).  I'm guessing that it doesn't like the fact that I'm using 6 different CommandBar controls on the same form.

Is it possible to do what I wanted to do to begin with, which is add one CommandBar control and programatically create 6 toolbars which will be resident on six different picturebox controls?  This would obviously be the right way to go, and avoid having to even deal with the crashes I'm having doing it the way I am now.  Seems like the CommandBar control would need an "Owner" property (which I don't seem to be able to find), or something like that, for each CommandBarControl object created to associate 6 different picturebox controls??

Thanks!

you can't. you must create 6 CommandBars objects for each PictureBox and  place them on PictureBox (not Frame)

That's the problem.  I have created 6 different CommandBar objects for the form, and placed each of those CommandBar objects in separate PictureBox controls.  You're saying this should work?  Then why is the form crashing every time I try and start it?

Is there any thread out there, or other codejock documentation, that covers this in any detail?  I was going to try creating 6 additional borderless forms today, dropping the CommandBar control on each new form, and pointing the OLE_HANDLE of the tabs to these new forms to see if that would work.  That seems like a rather inefficient way to have to do it though...

Thanks for the responses! I gotta say the codejock forum has been great for response times.

That's what I've been doing.  Actually, I've set this up so that each codejock tab points to a PictureBox control as the OLE_HANDLE, then inserted a PictureBox control within THAT PictureBox control, then inserted a CommandBar control within THAT PictureBox control.  Make sense?

Also, I am assuming there is no way to use one CommandBar control and programatically create each CommandBarControl and "assign" them to a PictureBox control, correct?  

Hold on.  I just noticed that at least one of the controls hosting a CommandBar control is in fact a Frame control.  Sounds like this is a big no no, so I'm going to change this and see if that fixes the problem.  Will report results.

Thanks!

OK.  I think we're getting closer here...

Changed all of the frame controls to PictureBox controls.  Reran code, same problem.

Deleted all of the CommandBar controls by editing the VB form using Notepad.  Opened up the form in the IDE, added the controls back in, BUT I commented out the following (and it works!):

CommandBars1.LoadDesignerBars App.Path & "\BasicNavigation.xcb"
CommandBars2.LoadDesignerBars App.Path & "\BasicNavigation.xcb"

For i = 0 To 4
    CommandBars3(i).LoadDesignerBars App.Path & "\MinorNavigation.xcb"
    CommandBars3(i)(2).ContextMenuPresen t = False

Next
CommandBars4.LoadDesignerBars App.Path & "\MinorNavigation.xcb"
CommandBars4(1).ContextMenuPresent = False

As long as I don't load the designer bars, I am able to save, close, and reopen the app without a problem.  This is not a big issue because I am in the process of using code to design the CBs, so this language will be deleted anyway.  But I think the problem has been either (1) you can't load the same designer info to more than one CB at the same time, or (2) I'm doing something wrong with the ContextMenuPresent property.

Am I heading in the right direction?

I see what your are saying SuperMario, and this may have been one of the problems I was having.  Since adding the controls programatically however, the problem has gone away.  I guess this means I should stick to doing things in code rather than the xcb.

To all who have responded to this thread, please accept my thanks.  Your replies made it a LOT easier to identify the problems I was having!