Advice for making resource dll

[gmmastros]

I have approximately 800 icons I use in my app. I am trying to consolidate them in to a single dll so that I do not have slightly different versions of the icon all over the place.

I tried several things, none of which are working out well for me.

Originally, I had several forms (for categorization purposes only) with a control array of images. Each icon (256 color 16 x 16) was loaded in to an image box. I gave each image a TAG and used that to get the icon I wanted to display. This approach worked well until I noticed that my app was using approximately 4,000 GDI objects after initially loading. Eventually ran in to the 10,000 limit and kaboom!

I also tried putting the icons in to a resource file. The problem I had with this approach is that even though I used 16x16 icons, they were coming out stretched to 32x32.

I then tried using an Image list. I'm actually using multiple image lists so that I can categorize the icons. This is a little bit of an improvement, but my app is still taking up approximately 2,000 GDI objects on startup. It's also taking a lot longer to load the app.

When my app loads, I dynamically create a "ribbon bar" that has approximately 100 icons on buttons. Unfortunately, I've already distributed my app, so I would prefer to modify this dll without changing too much functionality. Currently, I pass in a string that represents the Icon I want and the dll returns an IPictureDisp for the image.

Has anyone else done something similar? What are the preferred methods here?

-George
Microsoft SQL Server MVP
My Blogs
SQLCop
twitter
"The great things about standards is that there are so many to choose from." - Fortune Cookie Wisdom

 

[strongm]

VB6 can create, modify and use resource files, which might be exactly what you are looking for

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa228672(v=vs.60).aspx

 

[gmmastros]

I tried that. My icons are 16 x 16. When I pull the icons out of the resource file, they are coming out 32 x 32.



-George
Microsoft SQL Server MVP
My Blogs
SQLCop
twitter
"The great things about standards is that there are so many to choose from." - Fortune Cookie Wisdom

 

[strongm]

AH yes. Not a limitation of the resource file, more a limitation of VBs LoadResPicture function.

There's a trick we can use, leveraging the ImageList

[blue]Public Function example(icoResourceIndex As Long) As StdPicture
    ImageList1.ImageWidth = 16
    ImageList1.ListImages.Add , , LoadResPicture(icoResourceIndex, 1)
    Set example = ImageList1.ListImages(1).ExtractIcon
End Function

 

[gmmastros]

Thanks. I'll give this a try.

-George
Microsoft SQL Server MVP
My Blogs
SQLCop
twitter
"The great things about standards is that there are so many to choose from." - Fortune Cookie Wisdom

 

[strongm]

How'd it go?

 

[gmmastros]

I seem to be dealing with 100's of interruptions per day lately. I am still working on it.


-George
Microsoft SQL Server MVP
My Blogs
SQLCop
twitter
"The great things about standards is that there are so many to choose from." - Fortune Cookie Wisdom

 

[dilettante]

Have you tried experiementing with the PictureClip control?

 

[gmmastros]

No. Never heard of it. Looking in to that now.



-George
Microsoft SQL Server MVP
My Blogs
SQLCop
twitter
"The great things about standards is that there are so many to choose from." - Fortune Cookie Wisdom

 

[gmmastros]

I created a GIF with transparency (with only 4 of my icons). It was very easy to set this up. The problem is, the transparency part is showing a black. When I load the same GIF in to an image box, it shows the transparency[!]*[/!].

[!]*[/!] What I really mean is... parts that are supposed to be transparent actually are.



-George
Microsoft SQL Server MVP
My Blogs
SQLCop
twitter
"The great things about standards is that there are so many to choose from." - Fortune Cookie Wisdom

 

[strongm]

>The problem is, the transparency part is showing a black

The PictureClip control does not support transparency. But we can play the same trick for this as we did for the resource DLL, passing it through an ImageList control , for example:

[blue]Private Sub Command1_Click()
    PictureClip1.Cols = 2
    PictureClip1.Rows = 2
    Picture1.Picture = Iconize(PictureClip1.Picture, , vbBlack)
    Picture2.Picture = Iconize(PictureClip1.GraphicCell(1), 38, vbBlack)
End Sub

[green]' Mask represents colour that will be transparent[/green]
Public Function Iconize(srcPicture As StdPicture, Optional IconWidthPixels As Long = 0, Optional Mask As Long = 0) As StdPicture
    With ImageList2
        ImageList2.ListImages.Clear
        If IconWidthPixels = 0 Then
            .ImageWidth = ScaleX(srcPicture.Width, vbHimetric, vbPixels)
        Else
            .ImageWidth = IconWidthPixels
        End If
        .MaskColor = Mask
        .ListImages.Add , , srcPicture
        Set Iconize = .ListImages(1).ExtractIcon
    End With
End Function[/blue]