Introduction to PowerBuilder

Adding an icon to the Toolbar

Invoke the popup menu on the Powerbar and select Customize option. The buttons under the Current toolbar are the presently available icons in the current toolbar. To add an icon to the current toolbar, click on an icon from the Selected Palette and drag and drop onto the Current toolbar area. That's it, you are all set. In this case, the button you added has the standard functionality defined by PowerBuilder.

Sometimes you may want to do add custom functionality to the toolbar icon. In that case, you need to select Custom RadioButton from the "Selected Palette"; you will be presented with a collection of new icons. Add one of them to the current toolbar in the same way you added previously.

PowerBuilder prompts you for the command definition of the toolbar icon. You need to provide the command for the Command line prompt. For example, providing "E:\Program Files\Accessories\wordpad.exe" allows you to invoke WordPad by clicking on the newly added toolbar icon. The value you provide for "Item Text" option will be displayed as PowerTip. Value of "Item MircroHelp" will be displayed as MircroHelp on the Statusbar. Click on OK CommandButton and test how the new toolbar icon works. Similarly you can also assign a pre-defined query or a report to the toolbar button. These two options will be explored once we cover DataWindow painter.

If you customize Painterbar when the DataWindow painter is open (active), you can also assign a function or format to the toolbar icon. Painterbar has one exception in this matter. Once you add a toolbar icon to Powerbar, the added toolbar icon is available whenever Powerbar is displayed. As you know, Painterbar is displayed only when a painter is open. The toolbar icon you add to the Painterbar would be displayed only when that specific painter is open. For example, if you add an icon to the Painterbar when the Window painter is open, the added icon will be displayed only for the Window painter. If you open say, Menu painter, you won't see that icon.

If you have any problem doing the above, download the zipped Shockwave file (add-toolbar-icon.zip) and watch it.

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