HotKey Designer

In the Windows operating system, hotkeys refer to keyboard shortcuts that can be used to directly access controls in the user interface. To use a hotkey for a specific control in Visual Basic you simply have to insert the & (ampersand) character in front of a letter in its Text or Caption properties and the control will be easily accessible at runtime (that is, from a focusing point of view) by pressing 'Alt' and the designated letter on the keyboard.

However, managing hotkeys on a complex designer is not an easy task, considering a set of simple facts that usually apply in most situations. On one side all suitable controls should have hotkeys defined, and on the other side there should not be two controls having the same hotkey (on that same designer). The CodeSMART HotKey Designer can be used to automatically manage control hotkeys, by offering a hotkey generation mechanism along with the possibility to preserve (lock) some already defined hotkeys.

To generate hotkeys using the HotKey Designer:

1. Open a designer in Design view.
2. Select two or more controls for which you want to generate hotkeys or select none in order to load all controls.
3. Click the HotKey Designer button on the Designer Tools toolbar, or select the same entry in the CodeSMART main menu in order to display the HotKey Designer (quick toolbar and menu references are available).

   

4. Check the corresponding Ignore check boxes for controls that should not be considered in the generation algorithm (this should be set for all controls that either do not support a hotkey to be set or should not have one, like for example labels that do not directly correspond to a focusable control).
5. Check the corresponding Locked check boxes for controls you want to be considered in the generation algorithm with the already existing hotkeys - that is, further hotkeys (for the remaining controls) will be generated also taking into account these existing ones, which, on their part, will not be modified.
6. You can automatically lock all controls that have already defined hotkeys, by checking the corresponding check box.
7. Select from the Operation combo box list the hotkey generation method. For better hotkey management, you can also choose to remove all existing hotkeys (for unlocked controls) prior to generation.
8. Press the Generate button in order to generate hotkeys, respectively the Remove button to remove hotkeys (for unlocked controls). At this point the results are only previewed - that is, they are not applied to the designer yet.
9. Click the Apply button in order to apply the newly established hotkey set.

See Also

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