Fri, July 20, 2007, 05:30 AM under
Windows |
Vista
Over time I've talked about XP and Vista
textbox cue banners (and even implemented a
version for Windows Mobile), but I hadn't realised they can be used for Vista combo boxes as well! The clue came via
Kenny's MSDN mag article (includes many other features for the C++ Vista developer).
So all I had to do was the simple translation to managed code, which involves one line of code (assuming you have a combobox on your form with a few items to select and none set as selected):
SendMessage(comboBox1.Handle, 0x1703, 0, "Choose"); //CB_SETCUEBANNER
From left to right in the image above: Before the API call, before the call and the drop down open, After the API call, after the call with the drop down open. Of course once you select a real value from the combobox you do not see the cue banner (e.g. "Choose") again.
FYI, I actually found that any value for the two ComboBox properties
DropDownStyle and
FlatStyle worked, and the ones in the image above are
DropDownList and
System respectively.