How to Use the Box Method to Create a Shadow Effect

MORE INFORMATION

IMPORTANT NOTE: This article can be successfully applied only to objects that are direct members of either a form or the main Visual FoxPro window (_screen). Objects that are contained within, for example, the page of a PageFrame cannot have the same visual affect applied by using this method.

The purpose of the Box method is to draw a rectangle on a form or the main Visual FoxPro window (_Screen). For more information about Box method, search for "Box method" in the Visual FoxPro Help file.

Step-by-Step Example

This example creates a form that contains a command button. The Box method is used to create a shadow behind the command button.

1. Create a new form, and set its DrawWidth property to 5. Ensure that the DrawMode property is 13 - Copy Pen (default) and the DrawStyle property is 0 - Solid (default).
2. On the Form menu, click New Property and create a new property called zobjname. Modify the zobjname property to contain "", indicating a null string.
3. On the Form menu, click New Method, and create a new method called makebox. Modify the makebox method to contain the following code:

      zObject = "thisform."+(this.zobjname)
   
      * Adding 5 to the values below will cause the position to be
      * shifted down and to the right by 5 pixels. Recall that the
      * DrawWidth property has been set to 5. If one of these values
      * is changed, then the other should be as well.
      xleft = &zObject..left + 5
      ytop = &zObject..top + 5
      xright = &zObject..left + 5 + &zObject..width
      ybottom = &zObject..top + 5 + &zObject..height
      thisform.box(xleft,ytop,xright,ybottom)
   						

4. Place a command button on the form and size it to be as large as you want. In the command button's Click event, add this code:

      ThisForm.Release
   						

5. In the command button's Init event, add this code:

      ThisForm.zobjname = This.Name
      ThisForm.MakeBox
   						

   NOTE: If additional objects are added to the form, the makebox method can be called to act on them by adding the above two lines of code to the object's Init event, as demonstrated in Step 5.
6. Save the form as linetest, and close the Form Designer. Use the DO FORM command to run the form. Note the shadow effect behind the command button.