A visual user object is a reusable control or set of controls that has a certain behavior. You define it in the User Object painter, where you place controls in the user object and write scripts for those controls. Then you can place the user object as often as needed in windows you build in your applications.
The types of visual user objects are:
Custom visual Most useful if you frequently group controls together in a window and always use the controls to perform the same processing.
Standard visual Most useful if you frequently use a PocketBuilder control to perform the same processing.
Custom visual user objects are objects that have several controls that function as a unit. You can think of a custom visual user object as a window that is a single unit and is used as a control.
Suppose that you frequently use a group of buttons, each of which performs standard processing. If you build a custom user object that contains all the buttons, you can place the buttons in the window as a unit when you place the user object in a window.
External visual user objects contain controls from objects in the underlying windowing system that were created outside PocketBuilder. You can use a custom DLL in PocketBuilder to create an external user object.
You must know what classes the DLL supports, the messages or events the DLL responds to, and the style bits that you can set in the DLL.
A standard visual user object inherits its definition from one standard PocketBuilder control. You modify the definition to make the control specific to your applications.
Suppose that you frequently use a CommandButton named Close to display a message box and close the parent window. If you build a standard visual user object that derives from a CommandButton to perform this processing, you can use the user object whenever you want to display a message box and then close a window.
