accelerator keys and the tab control

pgtips · #1 (**permalink**) July 10th, 2003, 09:43 AM

I have a problem with providing accelerator keys for buttons on a tab control.

Keeping it simple to save me typing, if I have a tab control with, say, 3 tabs and each tab has an Update button on it, how can I make it so that the user can hit <alt>U and that will fire the click event of the Update button on the tab that has focus. Needless to say each of the buttons has to have the caption [u]U</u>pdate.

Anyone got any neat tricks for this? Would be much appreciated.

owain · #2 (**permalink**) July 10th, 2003, 10:19 AM

You could change the caption of the appropriate button when the tab is selected from "Update" to "&Update", and change all the other button caption's to "Update"

For example, if you have all 3 buttons in a control array cmdUpdate (cmdUpdate(0), cmdUpdate(1) etc.), you could do something like this:

Code:

cmbUpdate(0).Caption = "Update"
cmbUpdate(1).Caption = "Update"
cmbUpdate(2).Caption = "Update"

cmdUpdate(TabSelected).Caption = "&Update"

I hope that helps.

Regards
Owain Williams

owain · #3 (**permalink**) July 10th, 2003, 10:22 AM

You could always put that into a loop if you have more buttons:

Code:

For lngCount = cmdUpdate.LBound To cmdUpdate.UBound
   cmdUpdate(lngCount).Caption = "Update"
Next

cmdUpdate(TabSelected).Caption = "&Update"

There may be more efficient ways of doing this though.

Regards
Owain Williams

marcostraf · #4 (**permalink**) July 10th, 2003, 04:07 PM

Two cents.
In my opinion the Update button should be outside the tab, just like
the OK, Apply and Cancel buttons (in fact I will call it just Apply).
This is one of the GUI guidelines that I follow, but it is personal.

Marco

Quote:

quote:Originally posted by pgtips
I have a problem with providing accelerator keys for buttons on a tab control.

Keeping it simple to save me typing, if I have a tab control with, say, 3 tabs and each tab has an Update button on it, how can I make it so that the user can hit <alt>U and that will fire the click event of the Update button on the tab that has focus. Needless to say each of the buttons has to have the caption [u]U</u>pdate.

Anyone got any neat tricks for this? Would be much appreciated.

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