Frustrated with Microsoft: Uncovering the Mystery of Locked Toolbars

[Borek]

Sigh, I am fighting CMFCToolBar class. There is a method called LoadToolBar. One of the parameters is BOOL bLocked. Explanation in the help:

[in] bLocked

A Boolean value that specifies whether the toolbar is locked or not. If this parameter is TRUE, the toolbar is locked. Otherwise, the toolbar is not locked.

(see here)

Precision of the description is overwhelming. Trick is, help doesn't explain what a locked toolbar is.

It would qualify for the lame jokes, but I am afraid it was NOT intended to be a joke.

 

[I like Serena]

Educated guess: "locked" means you can't move and/or resize the toolbar, while "unlocked" means you can.
This would be similar to the Windows taskbar.

This is a user interface feature that is typically not documented in the API documentation.
It will or should be documented in a user manual.
If you really want to know, try both.
You'll no doubt see different user interface behavior, and you'll have to decide which behavior you want.


As for the documentation, yes it's of no use.
It would have been better if either explained better, or left out completely.
This kind of documentation is not uncommon when a software engineer is forced to document everything, especially if he doesn't even know himself what it is supposed to do.


Btw, I don't like Microsoft's Foundation Classes (MFC).
It's too unwieldy, although it is rich in functionality.

 

[Borek]

Educated guess: "locked" means you can't move and/or resize the toolbar, while "unlocked" means you can.

That was my first idea and first thing I tested, unfortunately, it is completely off. In reality it is about how the toolbar images (buttons) are treated. Something like when they are locked user can't change them - but I am not delving deeper, as it is not a functionality I need.

 

[Borg]

The isLocked method has a little extra info that seems to agree with ILS. I would assume that the method is using the variable in question but it is Microsoft we're talking about...

This method returns TRUE when the user cannot perform customization tasks such as repositioning toolbar buttons.

Locked toolbars use separate image lists. For more information about these image lists, see CMFCToolBar::LoadBitmapEx.

 

[Borek]

There is a difference between repositioning the toolbar and repositioning/adding/removing buttons. Locked means you can't do the latter, but you can still freely move the toolbar and have it either as a floating window or docked below menu.

At least I checked that locked toolbar can be docked/undocked and moved, I am not interested in modifying buttons so I have not investigated further.

 

[turbo]

MS is not a really helpful company for OS issues. They were much better back when MS DOS was being developed, IMO. I have two recently-purchased computers with Win7 installed and I am really not impressed.

I was never a fan of Unix and its later variants, but there is not a whole lot else on the horizon... Sad.

 

[I like Serena]

I disagree.
Microsoft has the most extensive knowledge base (KB) there is.
Any issue you have, you can usually find in the KB, especially when programming.

In the old days, Microsoft was a company with vision (Bill).
They replaced the old DOS system (that they made too) with a Windows system that had centralized drivers for hardware, that had lots of software coming with it, and that was much cheaper than any other option.

Each version augmented a lot of new functionality until they designed Windows NT from scratch (by "Dave"), creating a clean and advanced platform.

Of course that is more than 15 years ago, and new versions of Windows do not seem to augment all that much any more, except in price. ;)As for other systems on the horizon... what about Linux (Ubuntu) and MacOS?

The new Ubuntu is as user friendly as Windows is.
It is well documented on the internet.
And it has LibreOffice, which is basically the same (and compatible) with Microsoft Office.
My only gripe is that Microsoft Office is still more user friendly and has more extensive functionality than LibreOffice (or OpenOffice).