7: Customising the ToolBar

Menu of tutorials

Tutorial 1:   The Simplest WindowTutorial 2:   Using Classes and Inheritance
Tutorial 3:   Using Messages to Create a Scribble Window
Tutorial 4:   Repainting the Window
Tutorial 5:   Wrapping a Frame around our Scribble Window
Tutorial 6:   Customising Window Creation
Tutorial 7:   Customising the ToolBar
Tutorial 8:   Loading and Saving Files
Tutorial 9:   Printing
Tutorial 10: Finishing Touches

Tutorial 7:  Customising the ToolBar

Our frame window has both a menu and a toolbar at the top.  Customising the menu is relatively straight forward, since we can use a resource editor to perform that task. Customising the toolbar however is another matter. While its true that the resource editor which ships Microsoft's Visual Studio can edit the toolbar resource, this is not standard, and we so need to come up with a standards compliant way of modifying the toolbar. 

To set your own toolbar for your applications, you will need to perform the following steps:

• Modify the toolbar bitmap.
• Add the toolbar resource IDs to to the string table.
• Assign resource IDs to the toolbar buttons, as shown below.

void CMainFrame::SetupToolBar()
{
  // Define the resource IDs for the toolbar
  AddToolBarButton( IDM_FILE_NEW   );
  AddToolBarButton( IDM_FILE_OPEN  );
  AddToolBarButton( IDM_FILE_SAVE  );
  AddToolBarButton( 0 );				// Separator
  AddToolBarButton( IDM_EDIT_CUT,   FALSE );
  AddToolBarButton( IDM_EDIT_COPY,  FALSE );
  AddToolBarButton( IDM_EDIT_PASTE, FALSE );
  AddToolBarButton( 0 );				// Separator
  AddToolBarButton( IDM_FILE_PRINT );
  AddToolBarButton( 0 );				// Separator
  AddToolBarButton( IDM_HELP_ABOUT );
}