CueProvider

Introduction

CueProvider is a tiny class that lets you set a cue banner (the grey prompt text that automatically disappears when you begin to type) in a TextBox control.

CueProvider demo

How to use CueProvider

CueProvider is easy to use, and has just two methods - one to set a TextBox's cue text, the other to clear it. To set the cue text, call SetCue(); to clear it, call ClearCue(). These calls are best placed in your form's OnLoad handler.

  // Set cue text
  CueProvider.SetCue (theTextBox, theCueText);

  // Clear cue text
  CueProvider.ClearCue (theTextBox);

How it works

CueProvider works by sending the TextBox the EM_SETCUEBANNER message. The message is sent using the SendMessage() Win32 API. More information on the EM_SETCUEBANNER message can be found on this MSDN page.

Conclusion

As you can see, there's nothing overly complicated in this class. I put CueBanner together in a few minutes, and wanted to share it with the CodeProject community in the hope it could help give our desktop apps a bit of UI "polish".

Revision history

24 Jul 2008

Updated the "How to use" section.

17 Jul 2008

Initial version.

License

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)

About the Author

Ravi Bhavnani

Technical Lead
Canada

Ravi Bhavnani is an ardent fan of Microsoft technologies who loves building Windows apps, especially PIMs, system utilities, and things that go bump on the Internet. During his career, Ravi has developed expert systems, desktop imaging apps, marketing automation software, EDA tools, a platform to help people find, analyze and understand information, trading software for institutional investors and advanced data visualization solutions. He currently works for a company that provides enterprise workforce management solutions to large clients.

His interests include the .NET framework, reasoning systems, financial analysis and algorithmic trading, NLP, CHI and UI design. Ravi holds a BS in Physics and Math and an MS in Computer Science and was a Microsoft MVP (C++ and C# in 2006 and 2007). He is also the co-inventor of 2 patents on software security and generating data visualization dashboards. His claim to fame is that he crafted CodeProject's "joke" forum post icon.

Ravi's biggest fear is that one day he might actually get a life, although the chances of that happening seem extremely remote.

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A lightweight class that lets you add cues to a TextBox.

Type	Article
Licence	CPOL
First Posted	16 Jul 2008
Views	57,285
Downloads	1,645
Bookmarked	71 times

C#Windows.NETDev
Intermediate