Tip 119: Creating a Resizable Control at Run Time

July 1, 1995
Abstract
You can add many different controls, such as Text Boxes, to your Microsoft Visual
Basic forms. At design time, you can adjust the size and position of the control
. This article explains how the user can modify the size of these controls at ru
n time from within a Visual Basic application.
Resizing Controls at Run Time
When designing a Microsoft Visual Basic application, you simply add controls to yo
ur form as needed. For example, the Text Box control gives your program the feat
ures of a mini-word-processing program.
The size of the control must be set at design time. However, by using two Micros
oft Windows application programming interface (API) functions (GetWindowLong and
SetWindowLong), you can let your user resize a control such as a Text Box at run
time.
When you add a control such as a Text Box to your Visual Basic application, you
are essentially creating a new window. Every window created under the Windows op
erating system has certain style attributes associated with it. For example, a T
ext Box control may have a window style of ES_MULTILINE. This tells Windows that
this control is a multiline edit control.
Normally, a Text Box control cannot be resized at run time. However, by changing
the control's style attributes, the user will be able to adjust the physical si
ze of the Text Box while your program is running.
This is accomplished by calling the GetWindowLong and SetWindowLong functions. F
irst, you call the GetWindowLong function to retrieve the window's current style
attributes for the Text Box control. Next, you use the bitwise OR operator to s
et the WS_THICKFRAME attribute for the Text Box control. A window that has a WS_
THICKFRAME attribute is drawn with a thick border around its perimeter. You can
use this border to change the size of the window.
The SetWindowLong function is then run, which tells Windows to modify the style
attribute of the Text Box control.
The final step is to anchor the newly sized Text Box so that its new position an
d size is registered on the underlying form. The SetWindowPos function accomplis
hes this task.
Example Program
This program shows how to create a resizable Text Box control at run time in Vis
ual Basic.
Create a new project in Visual Basic. Form1 is created by default.
Add the following Constant and Declare statements to the General Declarations se
ction of Form1 (note that each Declare statement must be typed as a single line
of code):
Private Declare Function GetWindowLong Lib "User" (ByVal hWnd As Integer, ByVal
nIndex As Integer) As Long
Private Declare Function SetWindowLong Lib "User" (ByVal hWnd As Integer, ByVal
nIndex As Integer, ByVal dwNewLong As Long) As Long
Private Declare Sub SetWindowPos Lib "User" (ByVal hWnd As Integer, ByVal
hWndInsertAfter As Integer, ByVal X As Integer, ByVal Y As Integer, ByVal CX
As Integer, ByVal CY As Integer, ByVal wFlags As Integer)
Const SWP_NOSIZE = &H1
Const SWP_NOZORDER = &H4
Const SWP_NOMOVE = &H2
Const SWP_DRAWFRAME = &H20
Const GWL_STYLE = (-16)
Const WS_THICKFRAME = &H40000
Add a Command Button control to Form1. Command1 is created by default.
Add the following code to the Click event for Command1:
Private Sub Command1_Click()
ResizeControl Text1, Form1
End Sub
Add a Text Box control to Form1. Text1 is created by default.
Create a new function called ResizeControl. Add the following code to this funct
ion:
Function ResizeControl(ControlName As Control, FormName As Form)
Dim NewStyle As Long
NewStyle = GetWindowLong(ControlName.hWnd, GWL_STYLE)
NewStyle = NewStyle Or WS_THICKFRAME
NewStyle = SetWindowLong(Text1.hWnd, GWL_STYLE, NewStyle)
SetWindowPos ControlName.hWnd, FormName.hWnd, 0, 0, 0, 0, SWP_NOZORDER Or SW
P_NOSIZE Or SWP_NOMOVE Or SWP_DRAWFRAME
End Function
Run the example program by pressing F5 Click the command button. You can now mak
e the Text Box any size you want.