Additional Controls and GUI Guidelines

1
Start
Flowchart
Input weight and height
Convert weight to kilogramsConvert height to
meters
Calculate body mass index
Display body mass index
2
Is body massgt 25?
Yes
No
Display Normal
Display Overweight
End
3
Hierarchy Chart
Body Mass Program
Input Height and Weight
Calculate Body Mass Index
Display Overweight or Not Overweight
Convert inches to meters
Convert pounds to kilograms
Determine whether or not Body Mass Index gt 25
4
Pseudocode

• Input height in inches and weight in pounds
• convert height to meters
• height in meters height in inches / 39.37
• convert weight to kilograms
• weight in kilograms weight in pounds .454
• Calculate body mass index
• body mass index weight / height2
• If body mass index gt 25
  display Overweight
• Else display Not Overweight

5
Additional Controls and GUI Guidelines
6
Text Controls

• Label control
• displays text entered by the program designer
• used for output or labeling components on the
  form
• Text Box control
• places text entered by the user on the form
• used for input from the user
• List Box control
• displays a list of items
• Combo Box control
• combines features of list box and text box

7
Buttons

• Command Button control
• Places a button on a form that the user clicks to
  invoke an event
• Option Button control
• enables the user to make one selection from a
  group of choices
• Check Box control
• enables the user to turn an option on or off, or
  set values to true or false

8
Containers

• Picture Box control
• used to store a graphic image
• Image control
• used to place an image on the screen
• the image can be clicked, like a command button,
  to invoke an event
• Frame control
• serves as a container for other controls.
• used to visually separate related controls from
  other controls on the form

9
Image and Picture Boxes

• Allow you to load up images from the disk and
  display on the screen
• at design time
• at run time

10
Loading Graphics at Design Time

• Use the Picture property of
• images
• pictureBoxes
• forms

11
Loading Graphics at Run Time

• The LoadPicture function loads a new image into
  the Image or PictureBox control during run time
• Example
• Image1.Picture LoadPicture(C\pic\city.bmp)
• only a pointer to the file
• image file name must include complete path
• must remember to include graphics files with the
  application

12
PictureBox Controls AutoSize Property

• Determines whether a control is automatically
  resized to display its entire contents.
• If set to True, the PictureBox dimensions adjust
  to the size of the contents.

13
Image Controls Stretch Property

• Setting the stretch property to true makes the
  size of the image conform to whatever size you
  set the Image control.
• The default value, false, means the image control
  will take on the size of the image that is loaded
  into it.

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Image vs. PictureBox Controls

• Image controls stretch the image, picture boxes
  do not
• Image controls use less computer resources
• Image controls have fewer properties, events and
  methods
• PictureBoxes can be used as container objects
  (allows other controls to be drawn inside of it)
  or to display output with its Print method.
• picResults.Print Hello World

15
GUI Guidelines for Layout and Organization of the
Interface

• Make your design consistent with the Windows
  standards.
• Have the information flow either vertically or
  horizontally, with the most important information
  located in the upper-left corner of the screen.
• Use frames or white space to group related
  controls together.

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GUI Guidelines for Layout and Organization of the
Interface (cont.)

• Limit the number of command buttons in the
  interface to six and put the most commonly used
  buttons first.
• Command buttons should be either centered along
  the bottom of the screen or stacked in either the
  upper-right or lower-left corner of the screen.

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GUI Guidelines for Layout and Organization of the
Interface (cont.)

• Identifying labels should be left-aligned and
  positioned either above or to the left of the
  control and should end with a colon.
• Identifying labels, including captions, should be
  from one to three words only and should appear on
  one line.

18
Getting Help

• Online help
• MSDN Library for Visual Studio
• Microsoft web site
• http//msdn.Microsoft.com/vbasic/
• Additional texts
• Beginning Visual Basic 6 by Peter Wright
• Wrox Pres
• ISBN 1-861001-05-3