Why are things the way they are?

[shub]

I've noticed that the text boxes provided with VB are insert-only. So they won't go into overwrite mode when the user toggles the insert key. To make a decent workaround, you have to use api calls to find the status of the insert key, and pull little tricks to make the box act like it's in overwrite mode.

It just strikes me as odd how such a common piece of functionality was simply left out. Is there some easier way that I'm just missing? Might there be some other text box control out there that will handle this ability? Or will I just be stuck doing crazy workarounds to all of my text boxes just to get some simple functionality?

Please give me your input on this.

[Iain17]

The standard textbox is a pretty poor excuse for a control, but the advantage is that it does not take up much system resources.


If you want more functionality, look into the RichTextBox control.

[honeybee]

Perhaps MS intends to leave that task to us as an assignment in ActiveX: develop a textbox which overwrites by default!