- Before you
begin placing controls on the form, set the Grid Height and Grid
Width properties on the General Tab in the Tools | Options menu item
to 60 each. This will give you a smaller grid to work with tand will
make it easier to place controls on the form.
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- Place the
SSPanel you will use for your palette on the form first. Then place
all other controls directly on the palette. Do not place controls on
the palette by double-clicking the tool in the tools windows or by
using the Copy command. Click the control icon once and then paint
the control on the palette with the mouse. This sets the control as
a "child" of the palette. Now, any time you move the
palette, the controls will move along with it.
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- Place the
bound command buttons on the palette one after the other without
setting any properties. When you want to set the command button
properties, click one of the command buttons and then hold the Shift
key while you click each of the other three. Now you can use the properties
window to set values for all four of the control at once. Set the
command button's Font Bold, Height and Width properties this way to
save time.
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- You can easily
set border widths if you remember that the grid dots appear every 60
twips on the form. All border widths should be set at 120 twips.
This Microsoft standard makes it easy to distinguish separate
controls and keeps a nice border around the form and around palettes
and frames. Because border widths should be set at 120 twips, make
sure that you can see two grid dots between borders. This odd
spacing cause the user to break up the sections of the form a bit.
This make it easy for the user to see the separation between
controls. When placing controls in a vertical line, use the Top
property to determine where the control appears on the form. Because
each control is 330 twips in height and the controls muse be 90
twips apart, add 420 twips (330 + 90) to the Top value to determine
where the next control should appear underneath.
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