Enhancements

Version 10 of WOW Extensions, which requires RM/COBOL version 10 or later, contains both enhancements and problem corrections to previous releases.

• A new Tab Order Editor dialog box displays a list of controls on the active form and allows you to change their tab order easily. Similarly, a new Z-Order Editor dialog box displays a list of controls on the active form and allows you to easily change their z-order (that is, the order in which controls are created).

• Up to 16 user-defined custom colors are now saved in the WOW Designer's configuration file (cblwow.ini). This means that the custom colors are available to subsequent executions of the Designer.

• A [VERSION COMPATIBILITY] section was added to the WOW runtime initialization file (wowrt.ini) in order to provide the capability to restore pre-version 9 runtime behavior.

• The [WOWRT] section of the wowrt.ini file contains a new option, ToolTipTimeOutSeconds, which allows you to set the length of time, in seconds, that tool tips are visible at runtime.

• It is now possible to prevent ActiveX event code from being executed while another event is being processed.

• The location of the WOW Extensions runtime system, wowrt.dll, can now be specified on the Tools Preferences page.

• The External Edit Comparison dialog box contains a new command button, Run Diff, that causes the WOW Designer to write the information in the Original Code and Externally Edited Code areas to a file and invokes a file comparison tool to report the results of the comparison.

• A new option, Generate Old-Style Working Storage Guard Names, has been added to the Code Preferences page that causes the WOW Designer to generate Working-Storage guard names that are limited to 30 characters in length, which was the case in versions prior to 10.01. The version 10.01 Designer will generate names up to 240 characters long.

• The View menu now includes a Lock Icons command that shows or hides the lock icons associated with locked controls.

• The Form menu now includes a Test command. The location of the form test program, wowtestform.exe, can be specified on the Tools Preferences page.

• Two new properties have been added to the edit box control. SelectAllOnGotFocus determines whether the text in an edit box control will be selected when the control has focus. WantPopupMenu property determines whether a standard Windows popup menu will display when the user right-clicks while in an edit box.

• The tab control now has Accelerator and TabEnable properties that can be set for individual tabs on the control.

• The toolbar control now has BtnToolTipEnabled and BtnToolTipText properties that can be set for individual buttons on the toolbar.

• Several new WOW functions have been added: WOWGETINDEXPROP, WOWSETINDEXPROP, WOWFORMTOWOWVERSION, and WOWGETWINDOWTYPE.

• Default font settings for controls can now be established at design time using the Control Font option on the Default Colors and Font Preferences page.

• The Enable Mouse Move Events option was added to the Runtime Preferences page to allow developers to control whether the WOW runtime will recognize mouse move events. Mouse move events consume an inordinate amount of CPU resources even when no event code is attached. The ability to de-select this option is useful in preventing such resource consumption unless the developer deems it necessary.

• MouseDown, MouseMove, and MouseUp events were added to many controls as well as to forms.

• The date time picker and month calendar controls feature new events. Support is now available for GotFocus, KeyDown, KeyPress, KeyUp, and LostFocus events.

• The WOW Designer online help file now documents whether properties can be manipulated at design time, retrieved or set at runtime, or both.

• Support for the bitmap control is now available for panels.

• There are several new properties for forms. KeyPreview indicates whether the form will receive key events before the event is passed to the control that has focus. WSDefinition enables definition data to be written to a file having a .wfd (WOW form definition) extension. Version is a runtime-only property that represents the numeric value of the internal version number of the form.

• In addition to setting tool tips at design time, it is now possible to set them at runtime using the ToolTipText property.

• The font properties of a status bar can now be set at design time as well as at runtime.

• Several new ActiveX properties have been added, including Group, AllowMultipleEvents, NewDoMethodArgumentPassing, and EnableKeyPressforTabMode.