How to add a context-sensitive help button to the title bar of dialog boxes in Windows 95

SUMMARY

Windows 95 provides DS_CONTEXTHELP as a dialog box style to implement context-sensitive help in dialog boxes. The Dialog Editor included with Visual C++ versions 2.1 and 2.2, does not provide a way to set this style when designing the dialog box. This article shows, by example, how to add the context-sensitive help button to the title bar of dialog boxes.

Starting with version 4.0 of Visual C++, the resource editor does allow this extended style to be set. However, this causes the resource editor to generate a DIALOGEX resource that is not supported on Win32s. Therefore, to stay compatible with Win32s, you can still apply the method discussed in this article.

In Visual C++ version 5.0 and 6.0, the resource editor allows you to set both options.

In Visual C++.NET, open the Resource View of the project and set the "Context Help" property of the dialog box to "True".

   BOOL CAboutDlg::OnInitDialog()
   {
        CDialog::OnInitDialog();
        LONG style = ::GetWindowLong(m_hWnd, GWL_EXSTYLE);
        style |= WS_EX_CONTEXTHELP;
        ::SetWindowLong(m_hWnd, GWL_EXSTYLE, style);
        return TRUE;
   }