Introduction to PowerBuilder

HomePrevious Lesson: Defining Tag Values
Next Lesson: Window Color

Window Properties

We've looked at all the controls available in a window and properties for each control and seen how to manipulate these controls on a window. However, the window itself has certain properties. To see the properties of the window, click in the windows workspace (the space that is not occupied by any control in the workspace).

You might have observed that till now, when you do the window preview, "Untitled" is being shown in the window title. You can change the window title in the Title prompt.

Each window can have a menu associated with it. For example, while painting a window, you are in the Window painter; you see a menu at the top and a toolbar (Painterbar) associated with the menu. The term "associated" means that the options in the menu have a corresponding toolbar icon in the Painterbar. Similarly, you can paint a menu (We will explain in the next session) and associate that menu to any window you want. A menu can be associated with any number of Windows, where as a Window can have only one menu associated with it at any given time. (You can't associate a menu at this moment, since we didn't paint a menu yet.) Whenever you open the window at run-time, the menu will be automatically displayed.

Standard window (Under MS-Windows) properties such as MaxBox, MinBox, Resizable property can be turned on/off. All the above properties are independent of each other. When you want to turn on/off depends on the application requirement. Depending on the window type (we are going to explain types of windows in a moment), some of the window properties are not editable.

The following table lists Window types and properties. If nothing is mentioned in the table it means that you can turn the property to either True or False.

Property/Window Type

Main

Child

Popup

Response

MDI Frame

MDI Frame with Microhelp

Border

Always On

   

Always On

Always On

Always On

Titlebar

Always On

   

Always On

Always On

Always On

MaxBox

     

No

   

Resizable

     

No

   

MinBox

     

No

   

ControlMenu

           

Menu

 

No

   

You must provide at design time

You must provide at design time

ContextHelp

No

No

No

 

No

No

PaletteWiindow

No

No

 

No

No

No

ClientEdge

           
HomePrevious Lesson: Defining Tag Values
Next Lesson: Window Color