This is just another flat button control, that admits either a picture or a caption. It also has extra functionallity that will allow you to set certain aspects of the behaviour of the control, like different pictures depending on the state, if the button should popup or if the button should stay pressed on a click.

THIS CONTROL HAS BEEN REPLACED AND IMPROVED BY THE AR Button Control.

I didn't think about doing a control like this, as I have the Sheridan ActiveThreed Controls, which allow me to do most of the typical visual effects to my programs. They are quite expensive, though. There is also a 'Soft Button' control in the VB Owners section of the Microsoft Visual Basic web site, although this control only works with graphics, and doesn't allow you to have a button just with a caption (it also has a couple of bugs, but don't tell Microsoft). Finally I have seen other controls but they didn't work very well, and most of them were almost exact copies of the control made by Microsoft.

Anyways, as many people asked me about controls of this kind, and I also wanted to have a couple of features missing in other controls, I made my own one.

This control uses the Hot Track library, made by some programmer in Microsoft and distributed from the VB Owners web site. This library provides my control of the necessary events to handle the position of the mouse. The source code of the library is compiled with the control for speed.

Remember that to be able to use the control you will have to introduce the license information in the registry of your computer. You can do this by just double clicking on the 'AR Flat Button Control License.reg' file, included in the ZIP.

The control has a lot of properties, methods and events, so I will just comment the ones specific for this control. If you find any bugs, you have comments, or you think I should add something to this control, please contact me.

History:

• 19.03.98: Released version 1.0.
• 21.03.98, Version 1.01: Added functionallity (properties 'DarkEdges' and 'Active'), fixed a bug with the ToolTipText (also removed the 'ToolTipTxt' property), improved the appearance of the control in other aspects.
• 22.03.98, Version 1.02: The control will be able to show up to four different pictures depending on the state, through the following properties: DisabledPicture, OnPicture, PressedPicture, Picture. Also added the 'Enabled' property, that will show a different picture on the button if it is set, and will make the button not respond on any events.
• 08.04.98, Version 1.03: this release just improves the behaviour of the control.
• 12.04.98, Version 1.04: Added the possibility of aligning the text in the caption (left, right and center) using the alignment property. Also improved some aspects of the control. Fixed a bug involved with the 'StayPressed' property (read the Considerations section).
• 12.05.98, Version 1.05: Fixed a couple of minor bugs. Added the 'SetState' method.
• 08.06.98, Version 1.06: Fixed a bug that made the control not work properly when was disabled from its own code.

Properties:

• Active. When set to false, the button will not popup when the mouse is over it, but it will still get inset when clicked.
• Alignment. Left, Right or Center; this property sets the alignment of the text shown in the caption when the button is in text mode.
• AutoSize. If true, the control will adjust its size to the size of the text or graphic that contains.
• BackColor. BackColor for the control.
• Caption. That, the text that will be shown.
• DarkEdges. When true, the thin shadow of the control will be darker. Depending on the color of the form over which the control is, this might look better.
• DisabledPicture. Picture that will be shown when the control is disabled.
• Enabled. When true, the button will not respond to any events. Also, if the style is 'Graphic' and the 'DisabledPicture' property is set, the button will show the graphic set in the 'DisabledPicture' property.
• Font. Font that will be used to show the caption.
• ForeColor. Color used to show the caption. Ignored when displaying a picture.
• OnPicture. Picture that will be shown when the mouse is over the control.
• Picture. Graphic that will be shown in the button.
• PressedPicture. Picture that will be shown when the button is pressed.
• StayPressed. When true, one click to press the button and another to release. If false, you press and release the button with only one click.
• Style. 'Graphic' or 'Text'. If 'Graphic', the caption is ignored; when 'Text' the picture is ignored. If there is no picture set, the button stays in 'Text' mode.
• ToolTipTxt. THIS PROPERTY IS NO LONGER VALID, although it still exists for compatibility. Instead, use the normal 'ToolTipText'.

Methods:

• SetState (lState as enState). lState can be Flat (0), Raise (1) or Pressed (2). Use this method to, programmatically, set the state of the button.

Events:

• Click ()
• MouseEnter ()
• MouseLeave ()

Considerations:

• If the control is the first one in the tab stop list, and 'StayPressed' is true, when the form loads the control will appear pressed. To avoid this, set 'TabStop' to false or put another control with a lower 'TabIndex' property.
• If you want to put a transparent picture, you can put a transparent icon or a transparent GIF. The transparent part of the image will be set to the background color of the control. This is easier and works better than dealing with the 'MaskColor' property, so I didn't include it in this control.
• If you are using different pictures for different states, make sure that all the pictures are the same size. Otherwise the control will have a strange behaviour.
• If you don't set the 'DisabledPicture', 'OnPicture' or 'PressedPicture' properties, the control will use the picture set in the 'Picture' property. If you don't set this last one, the control will automatically change its style to 'Text'.
• If you don't want the control to popup, but you still want its picture to change when the mouse is over it, use the 'MouseEnter' and 'MouseLeave' events with the 'Picture' property.
• Before version 1.04, if the button had the 'StayPressed' property set to true and you clicked on any other part of the form (including other controls), the button appeared as released. Depending on how you want to use the control, this may be correct or wrong. From now on, to make the button stay pressed set its 'TabStop' property to false.

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