The Base Control Classes

FoxPro's base classes appear in the Form Controls toolbar when a form is open. Visual Basic .NET's base controls are found in the Windows Forms toolbar, which also is only visible when a form is open . FoxPro's base class controls are the bare minimum, and I was a little jealous the first time I saw the Visual Basic .NET Form Designer. However, it's really not quite so black-and-white. Some of the FoxPro equivalents of Visual Basic .NET controls (for example, the Color Picker) are exposed as function calls in FoxPro. And in other cases, controls with similar names have different capabilities, or one is harder to use then its counterpart .

With those caveats, Table 8.1 gives the approximate equivalencies of the base control classes. We'll cover important differences as we go through the chapter.

Table 8.1. Base Control Classes

FoxPro	Visual Basic .NET
Label	Label
TextBox	TextBox
Editbox	TextBox with Multiline=True
Commandbutton	Button
CommandGroup	Buttons within a Panel
OptionGroup	RadioButton
CheckBox	CheckBox
ComboBox	Combobox
ListBox	ListBox
Spinner	NumericUpDown
Grid	DataGrid
Image, PicClp32.ocx	PictureBox
Timer	Timer
Grid	DataGrid
OLEControl	Various
OLEBoundControl	Various
Line	Label with BorderStyle FixedSingle and Height=1
Shape	Panel
Container	Panel
Separator	N/A
HyperLink	LinkLabel
GetColor()	ColorDialog
CheckBox	CheckedBoxList
Menu Builder Context Menu option	ContextMenu
Visual FoxPro Report Designer Preview	CrystalReportViewer
MSComctl2.ocx	DateTimePicker
Similar to a combo box	DomainUpDown
(Automated valid clauses)	ErrorProvider
GetDir()	FolderBrowserDialog
GetFont()	FontDialog
Built into RadioButtons	GroupBox
SET HELP TO	HelpProvider
Form property	HScrollBar
MSComCtlLib	ImageList
MSComCtlLib	Listview
Menu Designer	MainMenu
MSComctl.ocx	MonthCalendar
Puts an icon on the Taskbar (N/A)	NotifyIcon
GetFile()	OpenFileDialog
Report Designer, SYS(1037)	PageSetupDialog
Report Designer, Ctrl+P	PrintDialog
Report Form	PrintDocument
Report Form Preview	PrintPreviewDialog
MSComCtlLib	ProgressBar
RichTextLib	RichTextBox
PutFile()	SaveFileDialog
N/A	Splitter
MSComCtlLib	StatusBar
PageFrame	TabControl
Toolbar Class, MSComctl.ocx	Toolbar
Built into each control	ToolTip
MSComCtlLib	TrackBar
MSComCtlLib	TreeView
Form property	VScrollBar

I'm tempted to say that this list consists of apples and oranges. FoxPro's base control list is actually only 21 controls: Label , TextBox , EditBox , CommandButton , CommandGroup , OptionGroup , CheckBox , ComboBox , ListBox , Spinner , Grid , Image , Timer , PageFrame , ActiveXControl , ActiveXBoundControl , Line , Shape , Container , Separator , and HyperLink . But on my laptop alone I have over 350 ActiveX controls, and every week some vendor sends me another dozen or two. When registered with RegSvr32.exe , these controls appear on the Tools, Options, Controls page, and on the Visual Studio toolbox under each vendor's heading bar. So it's hard to say that one language has something that the other doesn't. Except for the NotifyIcon , HelpProvider , and Splitter controls, each has everything that the other has, although the implementation is sometimes totally different.

Note that many controls listed in Table 8.1 are members of MSComCtlLib . This is a Windows Control Library, which you can easily build yourself in Visual Studio .NET. In fact, they are the equivalent of what we would use a VCX for in building our own subclasses of the standard FoxPro base form controls.