All I want for Christmas is a better group box
-
I hate the MFC group box. It's such a pain to use most of the time. Sometimes, depending on the order of creation in the resource file and making sure your tab stops and group stuff is checked correctly, you can't get your radio buttons to show up. That gets me every time. Grrrr. Also, why can't you actually GROUP your controls with your group control?!?! Let's say my application is divided up into sections of group labels. (I'm not claiming it's pretty.) If I wanted to temporarily disable all the controls in a group it sure would be easy to just have to disable to group control. This is a feature I'd LOVE. Come to think of it, maybe that might be pretty easy to do... Well, also Microsoft's dialog editor... Why can't I group some controls together, select them all, and actually cause them to behave like a group, even when dragging them around on the screen.
-
I hate the MFC group box. It's such a pain to use most of the time. Sometimes, depending on the order of creation in the resource file and making sure your tab stops and group stuff is checked correctly, you can't get your radio buttons to show up. That gets me every time. Grrrr. Also, why can't you actually GROUP your controls with your group control?!?! Let's say my application is divided up into sections of group labels. (I'm not claiming it's pretty.) If I wanted to temporarily disable all the controls in a group it sure would be easy to just have to disable to group control. This is a feature I'd LOVE. Come to think of it, maybe that might be pretty easy to do... Well, also Microsoft's dialog editor... Why can't I group some controls together, select them all, and actually cause them to behave like a group, even when dragging them around on the screen.
Some great ideas! Now if only Bill Gates would agree to implement them (which I doubt). Maybe you or someone could write a new group control to do some of these things.
-
I hate the MFC group box. It's such a pain to use most of the time. Sometimes, depending on the order of creation in the resource file and making sure your tab stops and group stuff is checked correctly, you can't get your radio buttons to show up. That gets me every time. Grrrr. Also, why can't you actually GROUP your controls with your group control?!?! Let's say my application is divided up into sections of group labels. (I'm not claiming it's pretty.) If I wanted to temporarily disable all the controls in a group it sure would be easy to just have to disable to group control. This is a feature I'd LOVE. Come to think of it, maybe that might be pretty easy to do... Well, also Microsoft's dialog editor... Why can't I group some controls together, select them all, and actually cause them to behave like a group, even when dragging them around on the screen.
Well, you have to realize that MFC is only using the standard windows Group box. This is just a button control, that draws itself differently. Thus, it is dependant upon all the characteristics of other button controls and cannot itself have child controls (well not easily). Other languages, like VB provide what you're asking for, but they have created their own controls for this versus using the standard windows ones. Microsoft doesn't usually provide anything more than wrappers around existing controls (with a few exceptions, like CCheckListBox). In any event, MS couldn't deprecate the existing group box, but they could just as easily create a new one. Though you could just as easily create one as well. As for the dialog editor, you can most certianly select groups of controls and manipulate them as a group. Just use shift or ctrl while clicking.