Library code snippets

How to “Snap” the Cursor

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By Karl Moore, published on 13 Aug 2003

If you’re attempting to create that foolproof Windows application, one great technique to use is snapping the cursor to a particular control, thus anticipating the user’s next click.

The following neat little function does exactly that. Simply pass in a control to get it started: it’ll calculate the exact bottom middle location of the control and then snap the cursor to that position. Here’s the code:

Public Sub SnapToControl(ByVal Control As Control)
    ' Snaps the cursor to the bottom middle of the passed control
    Dim objPoint As Point = Control.PointToScreen(New Point(0, 0))
    objPoint.X += (Control.Width / 2)
    objPoint.Y += ((Control.Height / 4) * 3)
    Cursor.Position = objPoint
End Sub

And here’s how you might use this to snap to, say, a Button control:

SnapToControl(Button1)

Comments

  1. Michael A. Jackson
    30 Apr 2007 at 02:26
    After spending an hour or so studying "How To Implement the Snap-To Feature in Visual Basic"---from Microsoft's Knowledge Base--which describes how to cycle through each of the controls in a form (and then I added the ability to cycle through each of the contained controls in any particular control) I then discovered that this paper was written for VB5, and that there is no button property called "default button". After another half-hour search, I could find nothing that in any way indicates that the Cancel or Accept properties are associated with the buttons; these properties are associated with the controlling form instead.

    This small routine of Karl's is so much simpler and more comprehensible.
    Thanks Karl.






  2. Developer Fusion Bot
    01 Jan 1999 at 00:00

    This thread is for discussions of How to “Snap” the Cursor.

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