ActiveThreed(TM) Plus

ActiveX(TM) Controls

Version 3.03.008

March, 2002

(C) Copyright Infragistics, Inc., 1997-2002

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This document contains release notes for ActiveThreed Plus. Information in this document is more current than the on-line Help.

Included Samples

The Samples sub-folder of your product installation folder contains various samples demonstrating the use of the product. Brief descriptions of these can be found in the file Samples Descriptions.htm, located in the Samples folder.

Upgrade Information:

For Users of ActiveThreed:

It is possible to upgrade existing projects using ActiveThreed controls (THREED20.OCX and SPLITTER.OCX) to ActiveThreed Plus (ssa3d30.OCX and sssplt30.OCX) by editing the project (VBP) file in a text editor, such as Notepad. You must make the following modification:

In the old VBP file, find the following lines:

Object={0BA686C6-F7D3-101A-993E-0000C0EF6F5E}#2.0#0; THREED20.OCX

Object={F7BA9F11-0A5D-11D0-97C9-0000C09400C4}#2.0#0; SPLITTER.OCX

and change them so they read as follows:

Object={065E6FD1-1BF9-11D2-BAE8-00104B9E0792}#3.0#0; ssa3d30.ocx

Object={8C3D4AA0-2599-11D2-BAF1-00104B9E0792}#3.0#0; sssplt30.ocx

Save the file using your text editor, and then open the project as you normally would.

Alternatively, you can use the conversion utility supplied with the controls. Just run the file Conversion.exe.  

Control Notes

New method added to SSResizer control:
A new method, Reset has been added to the SSResizer control, and when invoked resets the proportions used by the control when resizing other controls. 

New property added to SSSplitter control:
A new property, AllowMdiChildForms has been added to the SSSplitter control, and when set to True allows MdiChild forms to be set in a pane. This will allow focus to work correctly for this project with the caveat that you can't press the End key on any error dialog or you will get a GPF.

Splitter Panes containing forms:
You can now place a form inside a Splitter pane by using the Panes Control property at run-time. To do this remove the Caption and ControlBox from the form and in code set the Pane.Control property to the Form.hWnd property. See the ActiveSuite example for sample code.

When attempting to set focus to a form in a Splitter pane please note that since there is no way to set the container of a Form in VB, we are forced to use the Form's hwnd and re-parent using the Windows API SetParent.  Unfortunately, this prevents VB from being notified of the re-parenting resulting in control focus issues occurring.  One side effect is being unable to set focus to a control on a Splitter Form on the first mouse click.  Another side effect is that tab order of the main Form and the re-parented Form are separate.  You cannot tab from control on one Form to controls on the other.

Zorder Issues with Frame and Panel controls:
There is a known problem pertaining to Zorder with the Frame and Panel controls at design time in Visual Basic when the BackStyle property is set to ‘Transparent’. Unfortunately there is no current solution to this problem. For some reason when Visual Basic has a transparent control on a form it seems to reverse the Zorder of the transparent controls. NOTE: This only occurs at design time, at run time the correct Zorder is maintained.

Windowless property default value has been changed:
In ActiveThreed Plus the Windowless property now defaults to FALSE. This causes the control to have a window. If you prefer to have the control Windowless, set the property to TRUE. Note that there are limitations with Visual Basic 5's support of windowless controls. If you experience problems with windowless controls reset the Windowless property back to FALSE.

Delay values:
Note that when setting PictureAnimationDelay and MarqueeDelay properties the resolution under Windows 95 is 55 milliseconds, under Windows NT it is 10ms. If the delay is set to less than the resolution, the delay is equivalent to 0 and will be affected by any other applications using timers.

Transparency issues:
If you place a transparent control on top of another control (for example, a transparent SSPanel on top of a command button) the user of your application will be able to see the control, but will not be able to access it. You should avoid placing transparent controls on top of other controls.

Using Resizer with nested Microsoft Tabbed Dialog controls:
When using nested Microsoft Tabbed Dialog controls in VB it is possible to have the fonts of the tab controls resize improperly. This is a known issue with the tabbed dialog control. If you experience this problem simply change the fonts of the tabbed dialog controls to any other font and then switch back to the original font immediately after placing them on a form.

Transitioning certain controls does not work:
The way the Transition control works is that it sends a WM_PAINT message to all of its child controls with a memory dc in the wParam. Almost all controls correctly render themselves into this dc. However, certain controls don’t behave properly and unfortunately there is nothing that the Transition control can do to get around the problem.

The most notable example is the version 6 ListView control that ships with VB6. The version 5 control works fine, it seems the problem was introduced in version 6. If you encounter this problem with either the ListView or another 3^rd party control one workaround is to perform a SSTransition.Refresh or a ListView.Refresh after the transition finishes. This won’t show the control during the transition but will force a refresh afterward. You may also want to contact the control vendor to report the problem.

Too complex regions for SSSplash, SSRibbon and SSCommand:
The SSSplash control uses its Picture property to create an irregularly shaped region for its parent form. The SSRibbon and SSCommand controls use their Shape property (which is also a picture) to create an irregularly shaped region for their windows. There are situations where the region can be too complex for the OS to handle. This is especially true under Windows 95 and 98 in 256-color mode. If you have an image with large areas of a dithered color and one of the solid colors that makes up the dither is the transparent color (which is taken from the bottom/left corner pixel of the control) then the creation of the region may fail. When this happens at design time the SSSplash control will display the following message:

“The window region could not be created which may indicate that it is too complex.

The ActiveSplash control uses the color value of the lower left corner pixel as the transparent color. If this color is also used as part of a dithered color that covers a large area of the image the region may contain too many very small transparent areas. This happens most often in 256-color mode.

If the control's Picture property is set to an icon or metafile try setting the BackColor property to a SOLID color that is not used in dithered areas of the image.

If the Picture property is set to a bitmap try changing the lower left corner pixel to a color that isn't used in dithered areas."

Note: If you are developing under NT the window region creation may succeed but may fail when the application is run under 95 or 98. When this happens at runtime, no error message is displayed and the window reverts to being rectangular.

 For more detailed information, consult the Known Control Issues section of the help file (THREED30.HLP).

Container controls (SSFrame, SSPanel, SSSplitter, SSSplash, SSTransition and SSScroll) require a host environment that supports the ISimpleFrameSite interface in order to contain child controls. 

 Windowless controls (SSCheck, SSCommand, SSOption, SSRibbon) require a host environment that supports the IWindowlessControlSite interface (such as Visual Basic 5 or 6) in order to operate in windowless mode. In all other environments, the controls will operate in windowed mode; i.e. they will have a window handle.

ActiveThreedPlus 3.03.008.00 - March, 2002
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Activation removed

ActiveThreedPlus 3.03.007.00 - March, 1 2002 - Hot Fix
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ATP5139 - Pegasus Software FXImage/Shape visibility through transparency
ATP5107 - Active Splitter will not paint correctly if you resize the splitter height larger than design-time size

(3.03.005.00) June, 2001:

- New Product Activation Wizard now backs up and restores activation settings.
5153 - Stretched Style of the PictureBackground style of an ssPanel seems to reduce the resolution of the picture to 256 colors.

(3.03.003.06) February, 2001: