VB Forum / Enterprise Development / May 2008

It depends on the "tab" control you are using.

VB6 comes with three:
1) The SSTab is a 3rd Party control from Sheridan Software (recently merged
with ProtoView to become Infragistics).
It is similar to the
2) "Microsoft Tabbed Dialog"
3) And the TabStrip control. This sounds like the one you are using.

The main difference is the SSTab is a CONTAINER. Each tab page CONTAINS the
controls that are drawn on it, and when you switch pages, the controls on
other pages are not visible and the controls on the new tab page become
visible. This makes development easier as if the controls were on a form.
The SSTab also handles all navigation. Convenient, but comes with higher
over-load and limited to only those features provided. It is also very old.

The TabStrip is not a container. The developer has to place controls within
a container such as a Frame or  PictureBox, and manage visiblity and
navigation themselves. Less convenient, but comes with low over-head and
more mangleable.

Also a TabStrip can adopt an "XP Look". The SSTab can not.

That's your trade-off. Essentially all Tab Controls fall into two
categories - a full control, or navigation device.

There are a number of replacement Tabs out there, some free, some at
additional cost, some quite sophisticated with whopping prices. Most
commercial application either use a $$$$ suite or something home-grown.

Here's a nice one based on the SSTab:
http://www.vbsight.com/TBGDialogCTL.htm#SSTab

hth
-ralph

I assume that at design time you have the form maximized so you can see all
frames, and you put the frames side by side in a grid fashion?

You need to use a control array for your frames to make less code. In
Form_Load, loop through all frames and set all Visible property to False
except the first one, then position them on top of each other. Example(air
code):

Private m_CurFrame As Integer ' Current Frame visible

Private Sub Form_Load()
   Dim i As Long

   For i = 0 To fraOptions.UBound
       If i = 0 Then
           fraOptions(i).Visible = True
       Else
           fraOptions(i).Visible = False
       End If
       fraOptions(i).Left = 60
       fraOptions(i).Top = 60
   Next

   m_CurFrame = 0 ' First frame

End Sub

Below is all the code that you need to handle tab clicks regardless of how
many tabs that you have:

Private Sub tabMain_Click()
   If tabMain.SelectedItem.Index = m_CurFrame Then
       Exit Sub ' No need to change frame.
   End If
   ' Otherwise, hide old frame, show new.
   fraOptions(tabMain.SelectedItem.Index).Visible = True
   fraOptions(m_CurFrame).Visible = False
   ' Set m_CurFrame to new value.
   m_CurFrame = tabMain.SelectedItem.Index
End Sub

If the form is resizable, you need to add some code to resize the tabs
similar to what is in Form_Load.

Finally, if you prefer to refer to the frames by name; and I can't think of
many reasons in how to do this, use the following code which was suggested
by Ralph in another thread:

Private Enum Tabs
   eTabGeneral
   eTabNetwrok
   eTabAdvanced
End Enum

You could refer to it like this:

fraOptions(Tabs.eTabNetwrok)

Personally, I put the frames apart in a maximized form, but once I am done,
I put the frames in top of each other, and use Format-->Bring to Front/Send
to Back, so I don't have to maximize the form or put any code in Form_Load
event.