 Align EASY

JUST ANOTHER LITTLE PROGRAM THAT HELPS YOU A LOT

Align EASY is a little Visual Basic 4.0 add-in program, that helps you align and distribute controls relative to other controls or form (29 functions + undo). It is second member in my EASY series, first was MsgBox EASY - a message box designer (again one! You say?! :-) that features templates, variables, constants etc.

Before I explain it´s functionality, please notice that this program is a little bit shareware and the same portion of freeware (how about FreeShareWare ?). This means that if you use it for designing commercial software or shareware, it´s shareware and costs $5 US, but if you use it for your own fun or for developing freeware stuff, it´s free of charge.

I don´t add here long “bla bla bla” or so called license, because you probably don´t hurry reading it, so please accept my efforts to bring you some useful things and if you are one of them to whom this app is shareware, please send me some bucks ($ 5.- US cash). Thanks.

Click on some button for explanation:

 To display pop-up menu, right-click on Align EASY toolbar.

 Keep in mind that holding down the CTRL key while pressing buttons in toolbar causes this action to be taken place relative to FORM. For example pressing ´Center vertically´ button while holding down the CTRL key, all selected controls are centered vertically by form. ALT button has also some useful actions, check out meanings of each button by clicking on the picture of toolbar above.

 If a control doesn´t support left, top, width or height properties, new values are ignored and this control remains on it´s place. This happens also when you want to distribute controls to certain distance, but space you specify between 2 controls * number of spaces is larger than the distance you want distribute to.

 If you want for any reason to remove Align EASY from your system, run it once with command line switch /u that moves all entries of this add-in from Windows Registry.

Align EASY is Copyright 1996, Ahto Tanner.

Any comments, questions, suggestions, bugs are welcome to:

Also if you want to be in my mailing-list write to:

email: ahto.taig@online.ee

Money to:

Ahto Tanner

Karja 2-58

EE2820 Paide

ESTONIA (EUROPE)

I´m sorry for my ugly english...  but be happy anyway...  and PEACE (in other words, why to kill each other???)...


If checked, saves changes like window position, always on top etc. so next time you run program, window has the same position and state as when you closed it.


If checked, alignment toolbar will be visible automatically each time you start Visual Basic, so you don´t need to manually start it from add-ins menu.


If checked, you can use undo button on toolbar to undo your last action. You notice, that if undo is enabled, it takes a little time before selected controls are aligned. This is because program needs to save previous position and size of every selected control. This option is added if you need quick action and are sure not to make wrong button clicks :-)


Write here the default width of objects you want to apply while pressing [image] button.


Write here the default height of objects you want to apply while pressing [image] button.


Here is default value that is used between two controls when distributing controls on form or by largest control.


If checked, forces ´Space Between´ dialog to be displayed next time you press distribution buttons [image] or [image]. This is useful when you are disabled displaying mentioned dialog and use default value from above text box.


Here is default value that is used between two controls when distributing controls on form or by largest control.


If you check this checkbox, this dialog are not displayed any more and the value in above text box is used as default value.

 Nevertheless you can force to display this dialog even you are disabled this dialog by holding down ALT key while pressing distribution buttons [image] or [image].


Align left

Aligns selected controls to the leftmost control in the selection.

 Aligns selected controls to form’s left side.


Center vertically

Centers selected controls vertically by topmost control in the selection.

 Centers selected controls vertically on form.

 Centers selected controls (group) as one unit vertically on form.


Align right

Aligns selected controls to the rightmost control in the selection.

 Aligns selected controls to form’s right side.


Distribute & resize by widest

Distributes selected controls horizontally by the widest selected control. You can specify default space between controls in options window or if you you want, each time you click this button, the ´Enter space´ dialog is displayed.

 Distributes selected controls horizontally to the form’s width

 Forces to show the ´Enter space´ dialog. Useful if you have disabled it by dafault, but need it sometimes to be displayed.

 You can make a temporary control with required width for distributing other controls by this width and then delete it.

Example:


Distribute beetween first & last

Distributes selected controls horizontally between leftmost and rightmost selected control. This doesn’t resize objects and is useful for distributing check boxes with different sizes etc.

Example:

 Distributes controls so that the space between them is equal.

Example:


Make same width

Makes all selected controls the same width as the leftmost selected control.

 Makes all selected controls the same width as the current form.


Make default width & height

Makes all selected controls default width and height as defined in options dialog. Useful if you want to make all command buttons in your application the same size so they look better. It’s good idea to use the same sizes as in Windows’ dialogs, looks like the width is 1125 and height is 345 pixels :-)


Align top

Aligns selected controls to the top of topmost control in the selection.

 Aligns selected controls to form’s top.


Center horizontally

Centers selected controls horizontally by rightmost control in the selection.

 Centers selected controls horizontally on form.

 Centers selected controls (group) as one unit horizontally on form.


Align bottom

Aligns selected controls to the bottom of lower control in the selection.

 Aligns selected controls to form’s lower edge.


Distribute & resize by highest

Distributes selected controls vertically by the highest control in selection. You can specify default space between controls in options window or if you you want, each time you click this button, the ´Enter space´ dialog is displayed.

 Distributes selected controls vertically to the form’s height.

 Forces to show the ´Enter space´ dialog. Useful if you have disabled it by dafault, but need it sometimes to be displayed.

 You can make a temporary control with required height for distributing other controls by this height and then delete it.

Example:

See example of button above this (and rotate your head 90 degrees)


Distribute between top & bottom

Distributes selected controls horizontally between topmost and lower selected control. This doesn’t resize objects and is useful for distributing check boxes with different sizes etc.

 Distributes controls so that the space between them is equal.

Example:

See example of button above (and rotate your monitor 90 degrees!)


Make same height

Makes all selected controls the same height as the topmost selected control.

 Makes all selected controls the same height as the current form.


Undo

Undoes last action and repositions/resizes all controls as they were before. No need to select controls.

You can disable undo in options dialog for quicken operation if you wish.

 If you need certain add-in and can’t find it anywhere, then you must write it yourself.


 MsgBox EASY

JUST ANOTHER LITTLE PROGRAM THAT HELPS YOU A LOT

MsgBox EASY 1.0 is Visual Basic message box designer. I’ve designed it because all designers I have seen were so simple to help me as I expected. Here you can find some features:

 allows you to save templates for later use so you don´t need to rewrite code

 you can use VB 3, VB 4 constants or no constants at all

 you can use variables with your defined names for message text, caption and response

 you can place linefeed variable or constant to message text

 you can use automatic SELECT CASE block for responding user dialog choices

 simple & intuitive to use

 same program runs under Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 (message box icons on buttons are automatically changed to right Windows 95 dialog icons)

 lots of options for costomizing to your coding style...

Search the Internet for MBEASY10.ZIP and take a look!

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