Modal Dialog Boxes

Dialog boxes are either “modal” or “modeless.” The modal dialog box is the most common. When your program displays a modal dialog box, the user cannot switch between the dialog box and another window in your program. The user must explicitly end the dialog box, usually by clicking a push button marked either OK or Cancel. The user can, however, switch to another program while the dialog box is still displayed. Some dialog boxes (called “system modal”) do not allow even this. System modal dialog boxes must be ended before the user can do anything else in Windows.

Creating an “About” Dialog Box

Even if a Windows program requires no user input, it will often have a dialog box that is invoked by an About option on the menu. This dialog ...

Get Programming Windows®, Fifth Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.