Laying out controls on the canvas

You add controls to a custom dialog by dragging them from the tools palette onto the canvas. The canvas is divided into four functional columns in which you can place controls. The following considerations apply:

• The first (leftmost) column is primarily intended for a Source List control. Source List controls must in fact be in the first column.
• Target List controls must be in the second column.
• Sub-dialog buttons must be in the rightmost column (for example, the third column if only three columns are used) and no other controls can be in the same column as Sub-dialog buttons. In that regard, the fourth column can contain only Sub-dialog buttons.

Although not shown on the canvas, each custom dialog contains OK, Paste, Cancel, and Help buttons positioned across the bottom of the dialog. The presence and locations of these buttons is automatic, however, the Help button is hidden if there is no help file associated with the dialog (as specified by the Help File property in Dialog Properties).

You can change the vertical order of the controls within a column by dragging them up or down, but the exact position of the controls is determined automatically for you. At run-time, controls resize in appropriate ways when the dialog itself is resized. Controls such as source and target lists automatically expand to fill the available space below them.