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Windows Specialties
Some special things to notice for Windows
Issue: 1.3 (December/January 2002)
Author: Christian Schmitz
Author Bio: Christian Schmitz has written several articles for the German magazine
Article Description: No description available.
Article Length (in bytes): 4,896
Starting Page Number: 37
Article Number: 1319
Related Link(s): None
Excerpt of article text...
MDI or SDI?
On Windows your application can be one with a single document interface (SDI) or one with a multiple document interface (MDI). In REALbasic you can decide which one you want. SDI means that you have one window (the default window in the project) with the menu bar. If this window is closed your menu bar is gone. Examples for SDI applications on Windows are Notepad, Write, Paintbrush and the game Solitaire. MDI applications have like all Windows applications a menu bar at the top of each window. And, because windows doesn't have a central menu bar on the top of the screen, there is a large parent window for your application's menu bar that contains all your application's document windows (or child windows). Dialogs and floating windows can go outside this parent window.
Most users only use one application at a time and to avoid a lot of scrolling it's common to set the MDI Window to use the entire screen so the menu bar is at the top of the screen like on a Mac. In REALbasic 4.0 or later, this can be done by using the maximize command of the MDIWindow object inside the Application class. And to avoid problems you should use this command only in one place: The Application's Open Event, because only there do you have a chance to change this window before the user sees it:
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