MS Access Navigation control

This control looks somewhat like the MS Access 2000 Navigation Bar.
It can contain multiple views, slides up and down when you click on the header controls and allows you to scroll the views when the button pane is too small to fit all the buttons.

Peeking (with the SPY++ utility) on how the real MS Access 2000 control was built, it almost brought tears to my eyes seeing how easily such a seemingly advanced control is constructed.

The control is actually a ReBar control, with one or more views embedded. The views are built from Pager controls and embedded ToolBar controls. While the ReBar control's gripper-bars are custom drawn to look like header-buttons, the embedded ToolBar control handles all the button painting and message notifications. It's actually that simple...

How to use it

The control is designed to be used in a view - and not particular for placement in a dialog.
First you need to remember to initialize the Common Control Window classes with the...

ICC_COOL_CLASSES
ICC_BAR_CLASSES
ICC_PAGESCROLLER_CLASS

flags in the AtlInitCommonControls() call.

Then add this reflection macro to the parent window's message map:

  BEGIN_MSG_MAP(CMainFrame)
    ...
    REFLECT_NOTIFICATIONS()
  END_MSG_MAP()

Next - assuming that the project is built with a splitter style layout, or at least that the control will be placed in a separate view - create a view class looking like this...

#include "AccessBar.h"

class CMyView : 
   public CAccessBarImpl<CMyView>
{
public:
   typedef CAccessBarImpl<CMyView> parentClass;

   BOOL PreTranslateMessage(MSG* pMsg)
   {
      pMsg;
      return FALSE;
   }

   BEGIN_MSG_MAP(CMyView)
      MESSAGE_HANDLER(WM_CREATE, OnCreate)
      CHAIN_MSG_MAP( parentClass )
   END_MSG_MAP()

   LRESULT OnCreate(UINT uMsg, WPARAM wParam, LPARAM lParam, BOOL& b)
   {
      LRESULT lRes = parentClass::OnCreate(uMsg, wParam, lParam, b);

      InsertBand(0, _T("Forums"), IDR_BAND1);
      InsertBand(1, _T("Test"), IDR_BAND2);
      InsertBand(2, _T("Favorites"), IDR_BAND3);

      b = TRUE;
      return lRes;
   }
};

Finally, create 3 toolbars named IDR_BAND1, IDR_BAND2 and IDR_BAND3. Use the MSVC++ resource editor to create the toolbars; exactly like the default IDR_MAINFRAME toolbar. When adding text to the buttons, format the prompt string as usual: "Bla bla bla \n Command Text"

When you click on an item, you'll receive a WM_COMMAND notification in the parent window just as if you had hit a menu item.

Source Code Dependencies

Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0
Microsoft WTL 7.0 Library

See Also

The similar MS Outlook Bar control

Download Files

Source Code (6 Kb)