A dialog box is a special type of frame that is displayed in its own window. A dialog box differs from a window in two major respects:

  • It has a system window ventilator, but has no affordances for minimizing or maximizing.
  • While a dialog box has input focus, your application cannot perform any other processing until you complete the input or otherwise close the dialog box. That is, it is modal.

You can specify that a frame be displayed as a dialog box by using the VIEW-AS phrase. You can create a dynamic dialog box with the CREATE widget statement.

A dialog box can contain a frame family acting as the root frame. However a dialog box cannot be a child of another frame or dialog box; it can only be parented by a window.

The following example dialog box contains:

  • Two fill-ins
  • One radio set
  • One toggle box
  • Five buttons


Attributes

BACKGROUND attribute BGCOLOR attribute BORDER-BOTTOM-CHARS attribute
BORDER-BOTTOM-PIXELS attribute BORDER-LEFT-CHARS attribute BORDER-LEFT-PIXELS attribute
BORDER-RIGHT-CHARS attribute BORDER-RIGHT-PIXELS attribute BORDER-TOP-CHARS attribute
BORDER-TOP-PIXELS attribute BOX-SELECTABLE attribute CANCEL-BUTTON attribute
COLUMN attribute CONTEXT-HELP attribute CONTEXT-HELP-FILE attribute
CURRENT-ITERATION attribute (Widget Objects) DCOLOR attribute DEFAULT-BUTTON attribute
DROP-TARGET attribute DYNAMIC attribute FGCOLOR attribute
FIRST-CHILD attribute FONT attribute HANDLE attribute
HEIGHT-CHARS attribute HEIGHT-PIXELS attribute HIDDEN attribute
HTML-CHARSET attribute INHERIT-BGCOLOR attribute INHERIT-FGCOLOR attribute
INSTANTIATING-PROCEDURE attribute LAST-CHILD attribute MENU-KEY attribute
MENU-MOUSE attribute MOUSE-POINTER attribute NAME attribute
NEXT-SIBLING attribute NUM-DROPPED-FILES attribute NUM-SELECTED-WIDGETS attribute
PARENT attribute PFCOLOR attribute POPUP-MENU attribute
PREV-SIBLING attribute PRIVATE-DATA attribute ROW attribute
SCROLLABLE attribute SENSITIVE attribute THREE-D attribute
TITLE attribute TITLE-BGCOLOR attribute TITLE-DCOLOR attribute
TITLE-FGCOLOR attribute TITLE-FONT attribute TYPE attribute
VIRTUAL-HEIGHT-CHARS attribute VIRTUAL-HEIGHT-PIXELS attribute VIRTUAL-WIDTH-CHARS attribute
VIRTUAL-WIDTH-PIXELS attribute VISIBLE attribute WIDGET-ID attribute
WIDTH-CHARS attribute WIDTH-PIXELS attribute WINDOW attribute
X attribute Y attribute –

Methods

END-FILE-DROP( ) method GET-DROPPED-FILE( ) method)
GET-SELECTED-WIDGET( ) method LOAD-MOUSE-POINTER( ) method
VALIDATE( ) method –

Events

Developer events Frame-only direct manipulation events
Universal key function events DROP-FILE-NOTIFY
ENTRY LEAVE
WINDOW-CLOSE –

Note

Generally, your application must wait to complete dialog box input before continuing with other processing. However, the WAIT-FOR statement for the procedure can also respond to an event for a procedure handle as long as the widget in the WAIT-FOR statement widget list is a procedure handle.

See also

CREATE widget statement, FRAME widget, WAIT-FOR statement (ABL only), VIEW-AS phrase, WINDOW widget