Modified Appearance and Behavior of Visual Controls

All PowerBuilder visual controls are supported in .NET Web Forms application, but they may behave or be rendered in a slightly different manner.

Windows themes

By default, the rendering of visual controls in Web Forms applications uses themes consistent with the operating system of the client browser. However, by changing the value of the PBDefaultTheme global property, you can change the rendering of visual controls so that they display in the same way on all browsers, regardless of the underlying operating system.

If you select "XP" as the value for PBDefaultTheme, visual controls display with XP themes even when XP themes are not enabled on the client or Web server. If you select "Classic" as the PBDefaultTheme value, controls display with Windows Classic themes in all browsers.

You can let the application user change the control appearance by enabling the Theme Manager. The Theme Manager allows the end user to change the themes type to Windows Classic or Windows XP in a specific browser, however it does not let the user change the PBDefaultTheme value on the server.

See Web Forms Theme Manager.

Visual properties and controls

This table describes the behavior (of visual properties and controls) that differs in Web Forms applications from the behavior of the same properties or controls in a standard PowerBuilder environment. For a description of changes to the visual appearance of DataWindow controls in Web Forms applications, see DataWindow objects and controls.

Visual component or control	Behavior in Web Forms applications
Animation	When autoplay is set to false, the initial frame of the animation displays as a black area.
Border style: StyleBox!	The borders for RichTextEdit controls display as a white box frame around the outside of the control, with black lines along the top and left interior edges of the frame.
Border style: StyleLowered!	The borders for CheckBox, DatePicker, DropDownListBox, DropDownPictureListBox, EditMask, ListView, MonthCalendar, MultiLineEdit, PictureButton, SingleLineEdit, and TreeView controls display as a blue box (the default XP theme display) surrounding the control. Changing the color scheme does not alter the border color. RichTextEdit controls display with a thicker frame than in standard PowerBuilder applications.
Border style: StyleRaised!	The borders for GroupBox controls that use a raised border style are not as distinct as in standard PowerBuilder applications. RichTextEdit controls display with a thicker frame than in standard PowerBuilder applications.
Border style: StyleShadowBox!	For RichTextEdit controls, this style displays like the StyleBox! border style, except that the white-line box frame is slightly thicker.
Color Selection dialog box	Does not use a vertical track bar to change colors.
CommandButton	Text alignment is set to the left when the text length exceeds the control's width, not to the center of the button.
EditMask	You cannot use the Shift key to select text in the control.
ListView	Icon colors for the ListView items appear inverted when selected.
SingleLineEdit	Password characters can display in a strange font. To get consistent behavior in all environments, use TrueType fonts only.
StaticText	Text is truncated to fit the size of the control, even if that is in the middle of a word.
Tab	If you change the X and Y positions of a user object on a Tab control when the MultiLine property is set to true and the tab positions are set to TabsOnTop, the user object can overlap the tab page tabs. If you need to change the position of the user object or if you want to place it so that it covers the entire tab page without overlapping the tabs, you must first set MultiLine to false.
TreeView	Bitmap pictures for the TreeView items are displayed in their original sizes. Also, when you call SelectItem (0), a selected item does not lose focus. In Web Forms applications, at least one node must remain selected. If a RadControl TreeView (PBWebControlSource=RAD) has many nodes and the PBPostbackType is set to Synchronous, the client Web browser can take a long time to redraw the TreeView. You should use asynchronous postbacks with RadControl controls.
Window	MDI sheet windows display as tab pages instead of cascading sheets.

DataWindow objects and controls

Freeform DataWindow — in Web Forms applications, DataWindow objects with the Freeform presentation style can show part of a row when the height of all rows exceeds the height of the DataWindow control. For example, if one and a half rows can fit in the control, the DataWindow shows one and a half rows. In standard PowerBuilder applications, partial rows are not visible in the control.
TreeView DataWindow — Web Forms application users cannot use the Tab key to tab between items of a TreeView DataWindow control. The Tab key moves the focus to other controls on the current form.
ScrollToRow — the ScrollToRow method changes the row specified in the method argument to be the current row, but the specified row displays differently in standard PowerBuilder and Web Forms DataWindow controls. In Web Forms applications, when the ScrollToRow call causes the DataWindow to scroll up, the top of the specified row aligns with the top of the DataWindow control. When the ScrollToRow call causes the DataWindow to scroll down, the specified row displays in one of the following ways:
- If the row height is greater than the DataWindow control height, the top of the specified row aligns with the top of the DataWindow control.
- If the row height is less than the DataWindow control height, the bottom of the specified row aligns with the bottom of the DataWindow control.
For information on pagination display in Web Forms DataWindow controls, see Take Advantage of Global Configuration Properties.
Drop-down edit styles in DataWindow objects — by default, DropDownDataWindow (DDDW) objects appear as list boxes in Web Forms applications. When you open a response window or a message box in front of a DataWindow that has DDDW objects displayed as list boxes or that has columns with DropDownListBox (DDLB) edit styles, the DDDW objects and DDLB columns disappear until the response window or message box is closed.
The same temporary object and column disappearance occurs when an event such as Clicked, DropDown, ItemFocusChanged, or RowFocusChanged is handled. This is due to a limitation of the HTML SELECT element used to create a list box. You can prevent the disappearance of DDDW objects and DataWindow columns with the DDLB edit style by setting the PBDataWindowEnableDDDW global property to true. With this setting, DDLB column edit styles are automatically rendered as DDDW edit styles in Web Forms applications, and DDDW objects are not changed to list boxes.

For information on global properties, see Global Web Configuration Properties.