[RESOLVED] Maximising and laying out a common dialog box

Im developing a in-house project for serial transfer of some text files,which are read by the connected machine into operating recipes.
To make it easier for the operator, ive laid the front end out all nice so that they can use a touch screen panel.

However, because i dont know any better, ive used the common dialog control for when they click on the "select recipe" button. A standard window opens up and they can then select the correct file.

The window that opens up is too small, and the icons that show up are also too small for them to select the correct one by touching the screen.

Ideally, i would like this window to open up maximised, and id like the files within it to open up as thumbnails. This would give our operators plenty of room to press the correct file for downloading into the machine, without fear of selecting the wrong one.
I have figured out how to point the control to the correct directory
commondialog1.initdir = "C:\*****"

but i cant see the expected
commondialog1.maximise
or
commondialog1.arrangeicons = thumbs
(i know these dont exist, but just to give you the idea of what i want to do)

Everyone i have spoken to says that the common dialog control is too limited for this, and that i would be best to make up my own recipe select form where i could have total control of layout and font size etc.

Before i do this, (and i dont have clue where to start, so it will take me a while) i thought i would post a thread here, to see if anyone out there had seen or heard of a way of maximising the common diaglog box, and laying the icons as thumbnails

there are ways to manipulate the commondialog, i found this http://www.vbaccelerator.com/codelib/cmdlgd/cmdlgct.htm with google, there will be many others,

you can look at this to open with thumbnails, but will help if you can read german, http://www.kpries.de/index.htm?Entwi...filedialog.htm
also see this example at vbnet http://vbnet.mvps.org/index.html?cod...hooklvview.htm

Thanks for the tips. found some well laid out code by changing my search string in google (was searching on "common dialog box thumbnail view", but changed to cmdlg thumbnail).
ive posted it below in case it helps any other user out:
This allows you to set a default view mode on the common dialog box



Place a command button and a common dialog control on the form and insert the following code.
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Private Sub Command1_Click()
SetDetailsView
On Error Resume Next
CommonDialog1.CancelError = True
CommonDialog1.ShowOpen
If Err = cdlCancel Then Exit Sub
MsgBox CommonDialog1.FileName
End Sub
___

The following code goes in a module.
___

Private Declare Function SetTimer Lib "user32" (ByVal hWnd As Long, ByVal nIDEvent As Long, ByVal uElapse As Long, ByVal lpTimerFunc As Long) As Long
Private Declare Function KillTimer Lib "user32" (ByVal hWnd As Long, ByVal nIDEvent As Long) As Long
Private Declare Function GetActiveWindow Lib "user32" () As Long
Private Declare Function FindWindowEx Lib "user32" Alias "FindWindowExA" (ByVal hWnd1 As Long, ByVal hWnd2 As Long, ByVal lpsz1 As String, ByVal lpsz2 As String) As Long
Private Declare Function SendMessage Lib "user32" Alias "SendMessageA" (ByVal hWnd As Long, ByVal wMsg As Long, ByVal wParam As Long, lParam As Any) As Long
Const WM_COMMAND = &H111&
Const ID_DETAILS = 28716
Dim TimerId As Long
Sub SetDetailsView()
TimerId = SetTimer(0, 0, 0, AddressOf TimerProc)
End Sub
Private Sub TimerProc(ByVal hWnd As Long, ByVal uMsg As Long, ByVal idEvent As Long, ByVal dwTime As Long)
hWnd = FindWindowEx(GetActiveWindow, 0, "SHELLDLL_DefView", vbNullString)
SendMessage hWnd, WM_COMMAND, ID_DETAILS, ByVal 0&
KillTimer 0, TimerId
End Sub



You may also like to try other views by chaning the wParam argument in the SendMessage function call.
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Const ID_VIEW_ICONS = 28713
Const ID_VIEW_SMALLICONS = 28714 '98 only
Const ID_VIEW_LIST = 28715
Const ID_VIEW_DETAILS = 28716
Const ID_VIEW_THUMBNAIL = 28717 'xp only
Const ID_VIEW_TILES = 28718 'xp only
...
SendMessage hWnd, WM_COMMAND, ID_VIEW_XXX, ByVal 0&



this works a treat - thanks to hypetia for the code example.now i just have to figure out how to maximise