In this folder C:\Program Files\Jabaco\Samples\ControlDemo is a very good demonstration program. It shows how to get a menu working, a toolbar, and how all the controls work.

I would like to take this further and have two richtextboxes. Each richtextbox will almost fill the screen, and I want to be able to switch between these.

1) In my version of VB5/6 I don't seem to be able to find a Tabstrip. Maybe it was an add on?. So back 10 years ago, I was putting two richtextboxes on Form1 and then hiding them and showing them alternately. This works, but maybe it is not the best method?

2) In vb.net, you can interact with the Tabstrip on the GUI, and place richtextbox1 on Tab1, and richtextbox2 on Tab2. Then you can code simple things like


3) In jabaco things a bit different. The Tabstrip is set up in code rather than on the GUI, and this code is demonstrated in that very nice example above. As far as I can tell, each Tabstrip page is set up as a new "usercontrol" and then you place richtextbox1 on usercontrol1, and richtextbox2 on usercontrol2.

Then on the menu bar, use this sort of code (copied from the example)


This works very well, but each richtextbox cannot interact with any other richtextbox. The usercontrol appears to be self contained, so it does not know about controls on other usercontrols, or on form1. Even global variables do not seem to work (Dim in either Form1 or in the main Module).

What would be the best way to write this sort of code?

Is there a way of transferring data between usercontrols, eg richtextbox1.text=richtextbox2.text

Or is it better not to use the Tabstrip, and to put every single control on the one page, and then hide and show them as needed?

Or is there an even better solution?

Thankyou in advance.

init() sounds interesting - I'll check that out.

Tested global variables - that works well too. Declare a global variable in the main module.

With a separate usercontrol for each part of the tab code, it gets very complicated to code. For instance, if you put a button on one usercontrol and want to change the tab to a different tab, how do you do that?

The tabstrip1 exists on Form1, not on Usercontrol1. So Usercontrol1 can't see Tabstrip1, so it can't do something simple like Tabstrip1.SelectedIndex = 2

You could put a timer on Form1, check GlobalVariable every 100ms and pass control that way. It is a bit messy though.

Or - another thing I just found. You can put everything on Form1, and then move things around in code. You can move richtextbox1 so it sits on top of Tabstrip1. Then if you click the second tab, you could hide richtextbox1, show richtextbox2, and put this on top of the Tabstrip1. This gives the appearance that one is tabbing between richtextboxes, and also means that everything is in Form1, so they can all talk to each other.

I found a small bug too. If you have Form1 and Usercontro1, and you want to delete Usercontrol1, you right click it (over on the right part of the screen) and select "Delete". But it seem to delete the item under that item. Or sometimes the one above. So you right click Usercontrol1 and delete it and it actually deletes Form1

I shall do some more experiments.

event handlers of controls have to make sure that they don't spawn follow-up events.

Yes, I agree! I've had all sorts of bugs in code where you set a richtextbox to autoupdate things, that then spawn other autoupdates. eg I have some code that does syntax highlighting in color. I found it was simpler in the end to just add a button "update color".

I agree about trying not to have global variables.

Ok, so I am doing some experiments with tabstrip1. I have a tabstrip and I want to detect when the user clicks the tabstrip, and in particular which tab they clicked.

I found a little example of some vb6 code here http://www.vb-helper.com/howto_tabstrip_with_frames.html
which has
TabStrip1.SelectedItem.Index
However, this does not seem to be an option in jabaco.

So I went back one step to this bit of code

	Source code
1 2 3	Public Sub TabStrip1_Click() MsgBox("tab strip clicked") End Sub

but even that does not print a message when you click the tab strip.

Any suggestions how we could get this working?

Ok, I have something working here.

* Put a timer on Form1. Tick every 100ms. Enabled = True.
* Put a tabstrip on form1. Create two new usercontrols.
*Create a global variable for passing messages in Module1
Public GlobalMessage As String
* In usercontrol1, add a button with this code

* On Form1 in the timer


Now if you click the button on tab1, it changes to tab2. You can also add timers on usercontrol1, and usercontrol2, and then pass messages this way.

If the best way to create tabstrips is to have a new usercontrol for each tab, maybe this is a way for each usercontrol to communicate with other ones, and with Form1?

Maybe there is a better way, instead of a single string, create an array with Source, Destination, Message and any form/usercontrol can add to that list, and when a message is read it is deleted?