 |
 | Home | Contact Us | FAQ | Search & Site Map | Link to Us |
 | Sign In | Join | Other 45 Sites in Network |
VB Forum / Controls / July 2008User Control - Out on Memory
Hi there, I'm using VB6 and have written an ActiveX control in my VB project. It is quite small but has 66 picture boxes (using a control array) on it, however only 1 of them is ever visible at anyone time - the main picture boxes 'picture' property is changed to a picture from one of the control arrays depending on some properties. This control is used to replace a conventional VB button. I am using this control at least 15 times on any given form. At run time, opening 1 form with these control on seems to work, however when I try to open another form simultaneously and am running into Runtime Error 7 - 'Out of Memory' errors. I was under the impresstion that ActiveX controls where designed exactly for the purpose I am using them for - to keep code and funtionality contained in one place. Do Picture boxes have a particularly high overhead with memory (even though each picture is less than 1k)? the compiled OCX is 116kb? Please let me know if I'm missing any other information you need to kmow. If anyone can shed any light on what might be going on it would be greatly appreciated. TIA Tim Why 66? To replicate a standard button, you should only need a few... focus, no focus, clicked down, disabled. Even if you're doing a hover effect, that should only add another 1 or 2. > Hi there, > [quoted text clipped - 23 lines] > > Tim Yes, I'm thinking maybe my approach is wrong here. Basically I have, say, 30 pre-defined pictures that can be chosen as a property, then the control displays the right picture. Another way would be to pass the actual picture (GIF file) into a property of the control. Is this possible? - if so how would I create the property to enable a picture to be passed into it. Regards Tim > Why 66? To replicate a standard button, you should only need a few... > focus, no focus, clicked down, disabled. Even if you're doing a hover [quoted text clipped - 35 lines] >> >> Tim Sure. Off the top of my head, in the UC's (General)(Declarations)... Public PictureFocus As Picture ...gives you a "PictureFocus" pic property in the UC's property window, which you can also assign in app code. You'd also want to add to the ReadProperties and WriteProperties... ReadProperties: Set PictureFocus = PropBag.ReadProperty("PictureFocus", Nothing) WriteProperties: Call PropBag.WriteProperty("PictureFocus", PictureFocus, Nothing) To tidy it up, you can swap the pics within the UC's code accordingly, like on a mousedown, EnterFocus, etc. One way is to throw a sub or function in the UC... Private Sub SetThePicture(ByRef The_Picture As Picture) Set UserControl.Picture = The_Picture UserControl.Refresh End Sub ... and call it in your UC code... Private Sub UserControl_EnterFocus() Call SetMyPicture(PictureFocus) End Sub Just some basic "off the top of my head" examples. You'd likely need to expand on these depending on your needs. Like if you need to autosize, just add something like this to your SetThePicture sub/function... UserControl.Width = UserControl.ScaleX(UserControl.Picture.Width, _ vbHimetric, UserControl.ScaleMode) UserControl.Height = UserControl.ScaleY(UserControl.Picture.Height, _ vbHimetric, UserControl.ScaleMode) BTW, to get your UC/OCX to behave like a standard command button, you'd want to remove the DoubleClick from it... Private Declare Function GetClassLong Lib "user32" Alias "GetClassLongA" _ (ByVal hWnd As Long, ByVal nIndex As Long) As Long Private Declare Function SetClassLong Lib "user32" Alias "SetClassLongA" _ (ByVal hWnd As Long, ByVal nIndex As Long, _ ByVal dwNewLong As Long) As Long Private Const GCL_STYLE = (-26) Private Const CS_DBLCLKS = &H8 Private Sub UserControl_Initialize() Dim MyStyle As Long MyStyle = GetClassLong(Me.hWnd, GCL_STYLE) MyStyle = MyStyle And Not CS_DBLCLKS ' remove DoubleClick SetClassLong Me.hWnd, GCL_STYLE, MyStyle End Sub > Yes, I'm thinking maybe my approach is wrong here. Basically I have, say, > 30 pre-defined pictures that can be chosen as a property, then the control [quoted text clipped - 47 lines] > >> > >> Tim > Yes, I'm thinking maybe my approach is wrong here. Basically I have, say, > 30 pre-defined pictures that can be chosen as a property, then the control > displays the right picture. I'd agree, an array of 66 Pictureboxes would not be the optimal approach in that case. > Another way would be to pass the actual picture (GIF file) into a property > of the control. Is this possible? - if so how would I create the property > to enable a picture to be passed into it. There are several ways to accomplish that same effect. As was already pointed out, you could have a Picture type property. But, there are other methods you can use to provide pre-defined images, such as drawing the image as needed, or composing the image from individual elements, or even providing one large image that has 30 different cells you can copy from. Taking a cue from a form's MouseIcon, and MousePointer, it may be nice to have a list of pre-defined images, plus the means to allow the user to supply their own.... LFS Thanks for your all your comments. I am now using and Image box and passing the picture into the control. All working perfectly - happy days! Cheers >> Yes, I'm thinking maybe my approach is wrong here. Basically I have, >> say, [quoted text clipped - 23 lines] > > LFS Why even bother with a picture box at all? A long time ago I wrote my own button control using pictureboxes and it was a memory nightmare. Eventually I moved everything to API a drew everything via the hDC. Lightened things up a bit. | Why 66? To replicate a standard button, you should only need a few... | focus, no focus, clicked down, disabled. Even if you're doing a hover [quoted text clipped - 33 lines] | > | > Tim > Hi there, > [quoted text clipped - 24 lines] > > Tim One picture box should do it. Then those properties you mentioned would be applied to the picturebox. Galen > Do Picture boxes have a particularly high overhead with memory (even though > each picture is less than 1k)? the compiled OCX is 116kb? Please let me > know if I'm missing any other information you need to kmow. Each PictureBox has an hWnd. You should just use a single PBox per control and switch the image. Better yet, use an Image control, which doesn't have an hWnd. One very lightweight way to do it is to use simply an Image control with a picture of a button in it. On MouseDown (if Image is enabled) do: Image1.Appearance = 1 Image1.BorderStyle = 1 On MouseUp do: Image1.Appearance = 0 Image1.BorderStyle = 0 I've also created Opera/Mac style buttons that "glow" on mouse hover by creating a UserControl with an Image control on it. The Image gets moved slightly on click, to simulate button press. The glow, and also disabled appearance, were done by showing or hiding two shapes, one set to MergePen and one set to MaskPen for DrawMode. The images in the buttons are "3-D" pictures of silver buttons. I put the text on each button image and then have a Picture property for the UC, in order to load an image into each button created. There's an hWnd for the UC (which allows for a subclass to catch events) but no hWnd for the Image or Shapes. That design was resulted from some experimentation in which I was trying to get the leanest possible button control that would still, nevertheless, look like an improvement on a Windows button. (One downside, though, is that a button with an embedded image of the button text doesn't lend itself well to internationalization.) |
Reply to this Message |
 Sign In
 Join
 My Latest Posts My Monitored Threads My Blog My Photo Gallery My Profile My Homepage Start New Thread Enable EMail Alerts Rate this Thread
|
©2008 Advenet LLC Privacy Policy - Terms of Use
This website includes both content owned or controlled by Advenet as well as content owned or controlled by third parties.