TAB Control
The tab control consists of a group of small dialogs, where the group is kept together and treated as one large control - a child control of the dialog in which it is created. Each of the smaller dialogs are called pages and overlap one another so that only one is visible at a time, except for a small label called the tab. The tab can be positioned on any edge of the page. Clicking on a tab brings its page to the forefront of any other page in the control.

Each page, like any dialog, can have child controls placed on it. When the tab is selected (page made visible), all of the child controls on the page are also visible. When a page is not selected (place behind the visible page), its child controls are not visible.

Arguments
The Control Add statement is used to create all new controls. Here are the statement's arguments and any special significance to the tab control.

Usage
Using the Control Add TAB statement simply creates a blank control - no tabs (pages) at all. Use the TAB Insert Page statement to create individual tabs (pages) within the control, and to return the handle to the page. The handle is used with Control Add statements to place child controls on the page.

Here's the code to create a tab control with 2 tabs (pages). On the first page are 3 label controls. On the second page are 3 textbox controls. Page indexing starts at 1. 

    Control Add Tab, hdlg, 500, "MyTab", 20,20,100,150
        Tab Insert Page hdlg, 500, 1,0,"Page1" To hPage1
            Control Add Label, hPage1, 600, "Label1", 20,20,60,20
            Control Add Label, hPage1, 601, "Label2", 20,50,60,20
            Control Add Label, hPage1, 602, "Label3", 20,80,60,20

        Tab Insert Page hdlg, 500, 2,0,"Page2" To hPage2
            Control Add TextBox, hPage2, 603, "Text1", 20,20,60,20
            Control Add TextBox, hPage2, 604, "Text2", 20,50,60,20
            Control Add TextBox, hPage2, 605, "Text3", 20,80,60,20

Note that the handle used in the Control Add Label/Textbox statements is the handle of the page on which the control is placed - NOT the handle of the dialog.

An image can be placed in the tab area of a page. but must come from an imagelist attached to the tab control using the TAB Set ImageList statement. 

    IMAGELIST NEW ICON 16,16,32,4 To hLst
    IMAGELIST ADD ICON hLst, "face"
    IMAGELIST ADD ICON hLst, "x"
    IMAGELIST ADD ICON hLst, "y"
    IMAGELIST ADD ICON hLst, "z"
    Tab Set Imagelist hdlg, 500, hLst
    Tab Insert Page hdlg, 500, 2,1,"Page2" To hPage2

In this example, a resource file has already been included which contains 16x16, 32-bit icons "x", "y", and "z". The ImageList is set up to handle 4 images, although more can be added.

The Tab Set Imagelist statements attaches the imagelist to the Tab control, and the Tab Insert Page statement selected the 1st icon in the imagelist. The Tab Insert Page does not allow selecting the icon by name, such as "x".

When TAB control is destroyed, any attached imagelist is also destroyed.

TAB-Specific PowerBASIC Statements
PowerBASIC provides several statements specific to the tab control. These allow getting/setting tab properties.

Messages, Notifications, Styles, and ExtSstyles
There are four types of named constants in the following table. All are pulled from the MSDN web site.

The first column contains control-specific named constants and the second column contains generic window named constants (tab controls are windows).

Also, if the PowerBASIC Help file has an entry on the value, it is highlighted in yellow. If the value was noted in PowerBASIC Help as a default value, it is also shown in bold text.

In the values for notifications, descriptions starting with -n and -c refer to events received through the %wm_notify and %wm_command messages. By default, PowerBASIC controls can receive both of these messages.

   

And here is a short description of many of the named constants corresponding to notifications, styles, and extstyle - particularly those discussed in the PowerBASIC Help topics. 

    %nm_click              -n mouse click
    %nm_dblclk             -n mouse doubleclick
    %nm_rclick             -n right mouse click
    %nm_rdblclk            -n right mouse double click
    %nm_releasedcapture    -n releasing mouse capture
    %tcn_focuschange       -  focus has changed
    %tcn_getobject         -n object dragged over tab item
    %tcn_keydown           -n key pressed
    %tcn_selchange         -n selected tab has changed
    %tcn_selchanging       -n tab is about to change
    %tcs_bottom            - tabs at bottom
    %tcs_fixedwidth        - all tabs are the same size
    %tcs_focusnever        - cannot receive focus
    %tcs_focusonbuttondown - tabs receive focus
    %tcs_forceiconleft     - icons on left
    %tcs_forcelabelleft    - labels on left
    %tcs_ownerdrawfixed    - parent dialog must draw tabs
    %tcs_raggedright       - tabs are not stretched to fill width
    %tcs_right             - tabs on right side
    %tcs_rightjustify      - tabs fill width of control
    %tcs_singleline        - one row of tabs
    %tcs_tooltips          - enable tooltips
    %tcs_vertical          - tabs placed vertically
    %ws_child              - 
    %ws_ex_clientedge      - apply sunken edge border
    %ws_ex_staticedge      - apply 3D border
    %ws_ex_transparent     - draw controls/windows beneath control first
    %ws_tabstop            - allows receipt of keyboard focus

Callback Function
A control can have its own callback function, or use the parent dialog callback function.

A control callback function should return TRUE to indicate it has processed the message. This prevents unnecessarily calling the dialog callback function, which will process the message if no control callback function is available, or if the control callback function returns FALSE.

By default, both %WM_COMMAND and %WM_NOTIFY messages are received. However, if the #MESSAGE COMMAND compiler directive is invoked, the %WM_NOTIFY messages will not be available.

Here's a sample tab control callback function. 

   CallBack Function cbTAB()
      Select Case CB.MSG
         Case %WM_NOTIFY
            Select Case CB.CTLMSG
               Case %nm_click
               Case %nm_dblclk
               Case %nm_rclick
               Case %nm_rdblclk
               Case %nm_releasedcapture
               Case %tcn_focuschange
               Case %tcn_getobject
               Case %tcn_keydown
               Case %tcn_selchange
               Case %tcn_selchanging
         End Select
      End Select
   End Function

In each Case section, add the statements the application needs to respond to the event. Also, be sure to add "Function=1" as appropriate to indicate that the event was handled by the callback function.

Issues
Help does not define the extstyle& default.

Help defines default style& as %ws_border OR %ws_child, but neither is in the list of style values.

I'll update this page as soon as information becomes available.

CONTROL Statement Syntax
The following table lists the various Control statements (except the ADD statements). Most, but not all, can be used with the tab control. A one-line description of the statement and then its syntax are presented.

If you have any suggestions or corrections, please let me know.