[RESOLVED] Text colours in combobox

[Steve Cain]

Is there any way of setting (at design time) different colours for individual items in a combobox? I want to have certain items permenantly shown in a different colour to emphasise key options. A bold option would be OK also.

e.g.

Item 1
Item 2
Item 3
Item 4
Item 5
Item 6

or

Item 1
Item 2
Item 3
Item 4
Item 5
Item 6



Thanks,

Steve

[Hack]

Not with the standard VB combo box. You would need to find a third party combo control for this.

[Steve Cain]

I guessed as much

Thanks for your very quick reply

Steve

[gavio]

You can use ImageCombo

Squares on the left implicate the color

[Hack]

No, I'm afraid not.

[Steve Cain]

Cheers guys, thanks for your help.

Steve

[Hack]

I found this. See the "CustomDraw LV Demo.zip" Does it help?

[Steve Cain]

I found this. See the "CustomDraw LV Demo.zip" Does it help?

This is certainly what I was after. The only downside is that it requires a DLL installing on the users machine, whereas I would prefer to create a stand alone program that doesn't need to be installed.

This is of interest though and I will have a play, I am sure this can be of good use.

Thanks

Steve

[si_the_geek]

If you want a program that doesn't need installation, don't use VB - even the most basic VB program requires certain files to be installed (which might be installed on your target computers already, but might not!).

For more info, see the article Why doesn't my program work on another computer? from our Classic VB FAQs (in the FAQ forum, which is shown near the top of our home page)

[Steve Cain]

I create small utility programs, some are very basic. None require any installation and VB suits me fine.

See some examples here: Diving utilities

Steve

[si_the_geek]

As explained in my previous post and the link I provided, all VB programs require some level of installation, as they all have dependencies - you have just been lucky (so far) that somebody else has already installed the components that are needed by your programs.

That will not always be the case.

[Hack]

That will not always be the case.

And a point in case will be whatever control you decide to go with in terms of the combo box control that supports multi colored lines. That will require a formal installation and registration on each machine running the program.

[Steve Cain]

The programs I have written will all work with standard Windows installations, probably would work with basic Win98 install.

Cheers all.

Steve

[si_the_geek]

That may be the case for certain editions of Win98SE but not the standard Win98, as it was released before VB6, and so does not include even the basic runtime package (even some editions of Win2000 don't).

Even when the runtime package is installed, it could well be an old version (only Vista includes an up to date one!), and thus include many bugs - there have been hundreds of issues corrected over the years.

Whether you are willing to admit it or not, so far you have just been lucky that somehow a version of the runtime has been installed before your program has been run (either as part of the Windows installation, or by a more knowledgeable programmer), and it does not have obvious bugs for your program.


There are good reasons for the vast majority of programs for Windows requiring an installation - it isn't just done for show.

[gavio]

I agree with si here. VB still needs some libraries to run no mather what components app uses. A great examples is the main VB library (if you're using VB6):

...\SYSTEM32\msvbvm60.dll

. If you delete it no VB app will work. As said, you're lucky all users had it on their Windows.