Custom Dialog Boxes; Custom User Interfaces

The StatisticaA Visual Basic environment provides all tools to program complete custom user interfaces. A powerful UserDialog Editor is included to design dialog boxes using simple operations such as dragging buttons to the desired locations. Unlike in Microsoft Visual Basic 6, the user-defined dialog boxes are stored along with the program code as data of type UserDialog. This method of creating dialog boxes enables you to create sophisticated user interfaces that can easily be edited in textual form; also, by defining the entire dialog box as a variable, you can completely define dialog boxes inside subroutines, which can be freely moved around the program.

However, user-defined dialog boxes designed in the Statistica Visual Basic environment cannot be ported directly to Microsoft Visual Basic 6, which uses a form-based method of creating dialog boxes. This is not a serious limitation, though, but rather a "design-issue" in the sense that you should decide before embarking on the development of a complex program with extensive custom (user-defined) dialog boxes which environment you prefer. For example, if you are already familiar with the Microsoft Visual Basic 6 environment, or want to augment an existing program that was developed in that environment, there would be clear advantages in staying with that language. To reiterate, virtually all Statistica Visual Basic functions are accessible from the Visual Basic environments in other applications (such as Microsoft Visual Basic 6, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, etc.).

Following are links to examples that illustrate the flexibility and versatility of using the UserDialog data type in the Statistica Visual Basic environment.