How To Force Push-Buttons on a Toolbar to be Raised

By default, when you put push-buttons on a toolbar they are flat until you hover over them with a mouse.Â For instance, this toolbar has 4 push-buttons with an icon on them, one push-button with âExitâ and another with the âflatâ style.Â ...

How to deploy bitmaps when running in the Application Server/Thin Client

When developing a graphical screen with bitmapsâ either using the screen painter in the isCOBOL IDE are coding by hand â it is common to add bitmaps with a relative path. The bitmaps are found if the program is running in stand-alone mode, but...

Managing High-DPI Behavior in isCOBOL UIs (Windows and Multi-Platform Options)

Starting with Java 11, the Java runtime is DPI-aware by default.On displays configured above 96 DPI (for example 120, 150 or 200 DPI), Java automatically scales UI elements. For standard isCOBOL GUI applications this may result in: resized UI...

How to Dynamically Add Tab Pages with GUI Controls to a Tab Control

You can decide at runtime whether specific pages should be added to a tab control, based on the nature of the data or specific data values. Additionally, you can dynamically populate those pages with any GUI controls you need. For example, if you...

How to detect if a computer has more than one monitor and use any of them?

Today, it’s common for users to work with more than one monitor.Â Â If your application needs to take advantage multiple screens, rather than limiting windows to a single default monitor, you can use the C$MONITOR library routine. Detecting...

How to set a custom border color for controls

a { text-decoration: none; color: #464feb; } tr th, tr td { border: 1px solid #e6e6e6; } tr th { background-color: #f5f5f5; } You can use the BORDER-COLOR property on any control that displays a border when the BOXED style is...

How to put a hint or example inside the entry-field and combo-box controls when they are empty.

a { text-decoration: none; color: #464feb; } tr th, tr td { border: 1px solid #e6e6e6; } tr th { background-color: #f5f5f5; } You can use the PLACEHOLDER property to display a hint inside the control when its value is empty. This...

How to use the Accordion style TAB-CONTROL.

a { text-decoration: none; color: #464feb; } tr th, tr td { border: 1px solid #e6e6e6; } tr th { background-color: #f5f5f5; } a { text-decoration: none; color: #464feb; } tr th, tr td { border: 1px solid #e6e6e6; } tr...

A better way to add protection to a Grid row, column, or cell.

When a Grid resource (row, column or cell) has to be protected from editing, it's normal practice to1. Assign an event procedure to the Grid (if not yet available),2. Insert the handling of the MSG-BEGIN-ENTRY event,3. Check if the X/Y...

How to show an animated gif with isCOBOL

To display a moving image, or .gif, use a label control, assigning a title in HTML code. For example: string '

How to configure the color of a read-only entry-field.

To change the default color of a read-only entry-field you can apply the background-color and foreground-color properties or the color property to combine custom background and foreground colors in the entry-field control's properties.Â To...

UNC Paths with the Web-Browser control don't work. What can I do to solve it?

This can be solved by adding the "No-Msg-Before-Navigate" style to your web-browser control, orÂ iscobol.gui.webbrowser.no_msg_before_navigate=true in your configuration file. This style prevents the generation of the MSG-BEFORE-NAVIGATE event and it...

Modernizing your COBOL application by using isCOBOL Compiler code injection

a { text-decoration: none; color: #464feb; } tr th, tr td { border: 1px solid #e6e6e6; } tr th { background-color: #f5f5f5; } From version 2019 R1 onward, you can use a compiler configuration variable to insert COBOL code that sets...

How to modify the GUI controls of a Screen program from a called routine.

Sometimes you may want to have some special routines to apply similar changes to GUI controls of one or more screen programs.Â Â You can do this by passing the handle of the control, defined in the calling program, to a called program which would...

How to show leading zeros when numeric data items are displayed on a character screen.

Use the -cnlz compile option, implemented in version 2015R1. -cnlz Leading zeros are shown when numeric data items are displayed on a character based screen. Â

How to refresh the current contents of a paged grid

You can empty the grid of any data except for column headers through the action property, like this: modify grid-1 action = ACTION-CURRENT-PAGE Then generate the grid's PAGED-NEXT event. If you position a data file using the START statement...

How to display a notification window that requires no user intervention

The display window syntax was extended in version 2018R1 to add the display of a notification window.Â A notification window is an undecorated window notifying the user about events that will or are happening in your program.Â This window doesn&...

How to easily change the font of a character program

A default screen in isCOBOL uses SanSerif 9 pt bold. If you’re using the default font for your character screen and you want to change it, try this method. The attached program MAIN.cbl displays a screen, but doesn’t define the main...

How to improve the performance of your application by making your Tab-Control a container.

When the allow-container style is set, a tab control becomes a container control. Â Â 03 screen1-tc-1 tab-controlÂ Â Â Â Â Â tab-to-add ("Page1", "Page2")Â Â Â Â Â Â allow-container. By making the tab control a container, you remove the need to...

How to add helpful options to the Status-Bar control

There are some user-friendly options that are often displayed on the status bar at the bottom of the screen. These include whether the caps lock, num lock, and insert mode keys are on or off, as well as the current date and time. isCOBOL's...

Does isCOBOL provide Graph modules to show statistics?

We suggest using one of the many Java Beans packages for graphing and other statistics tools. isCOBOL's sample program ISCONTROLSET is our demo showing the GUI capabilities of each control in the isCOBOL control set. It also demonstrates using...

Does isCOBOL provide GUI design support?

Yes! It's easy to design and generate fully graphical screen programs using the WYSIWYG Screen editor in the isCOBOL IDE. The IDE includes several other content editors make your GUI screen design problem free; for example, there are graphical...

iscobol.font.default and DEFAULT-FONT

When a program requests DEFAULT-FONT... Use the value of iscobol.font.default if it is set If iscobol.font.default is not set then use the value of iscobol.font.medium if it is set If neither iscobol.font.default nor iscobol.font.medium are set...

How to adjust program screens to different screen resolutions.

Question: We are using the same program to run in thin client, a web browser in PC and a web browser on a phone. Will the screen auto resize to fit the browser or do we need to have different programs for each environment? Answer: No, you don&...

How do I center a window on the desktop?

To center a window use W$CENTER_WINDOW. Pass the window handle to this library to center the window on the current screen: call "W$CENTER-WINDOW" using windowHandle You can also pass the screen index to center your screen on a different...

Modernize your character application

This guide discusses the modernization process of a legacy COBOL application with character-based user interface. It demonstrates the necessary steps to transform the character-based user interface into a graphical user interface. The code...

How to use font-based icons in isCOBOL GUI programs

When your GUI application is going to need a large variety of different bitmaps for any kind of GUI control that accepts a bitmap for its icon, you can use font-based bitmaps instead of trying to get different images for each control. Bitmap fonts...

How to copy data from the clipboard

If an isCOBOL program needs to use the current data from the clipboard, and that isCOBOL program has an active screen, it is simple to do using the action-paste action of an entry-field. The basic code to place the data from the Clipboard into an...

Do isCOBOL GUI Screens have resizing capabilities?

Yes, starting with isCOBOL 2019R2, all the isCOBOL GUI, Graphical windows, Screen Programs or isCOBOL WOW programs generated by the IDE can take advantage of an easy to use and low impact layout manager to handle application resizing. Simply by...

Gradient effects

One of the many new features of the Graphical User Interface released with version 2018 R1 is the capability to provide to a Window control of Gradient effects. This capability comes as a property of the Window control and has three components:...

Is it possible to sort dates in a grid control?

The grid allows you to sort dates when the SORTABLE-COLUMN style is set. You have to specify the date-format for the column using DATA-TYPES property. e.g. DATA-TYPES ("D,yyyy-MM-dd")

Working with a grid control is there a way to get the double-click event?

Since double click on grid cells make you edit the cell value, the event returned for double click is MSG-BEGIN-ENTRY. During this event, you can inquire the ENTRY-REASON property in order to distinguish if double click used to edit the cell. if...

Can I have an entry-field that more or less works the same as Google Search? So I would like to be able to change the contents of the list while the user is typing...

The ability to pop up a list of possible values while the user is editing an EntryField is possible using the PROPOSAL properties of the entry-field control. In attachment a complete test program that show this particular functionality.

What are the specific fonts that isCOBOL uses by default?

isCOBOL uses the following fonts by default: DEFAULT-FONT = SansSerif 9 pt bold MEDIUM-FONT = SansSerif 9 pt bold FIXED-FONT = Monospaced 9 pt bold TRADITIONAL-FONT = Monospaced 9 pt bold LARGE-FONT = SansSerif 10 pt bold SMALL-FONT =...

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