An interesting navigation feature to add to a word processor is that of thumbnail navigation -- create a thumbnail of every page in a document and display it on the left of the currently active document (as illustrated in the screenshot to the right).
In this sample application, you will learn how to create such navigation by using a small, zoomed TX Text Control. Every page of the current document is displayed on a separate TX Text Control that is added to a scrollable panel control.
First of all, we have to create a new TX Text Control for every page and copy the current page using the Load and Save methods into the small thumbnail TX Text Control. Consider the following code:
For pageCount = 1 To TextControl1.Pages
Dim thumb As New TXTextControl.TextControl
Dim dataBuffer() As Byte
With thumb
[...]
TextControl1.Selection.Save(dataBuffer, TXTextControl.BinaryStreamType.InternalFormat)
AddHandler .Click, AddressOf thumb_Click
AddHandler .MouseHover, AddressOf thumb_Hover
AddHandler .MouseLeave, AddressOf thumb_Leave
End With
Panel2.Controls.Add(thumb)
If Not dataBuffer Is Nothing Then
thumb.Load(dataBuffer, TXTextControl.BinaryStreamType.InternalFormat)
End If
NextAdditionally, we add some event handlers for the thumbnails: a Click, a MouseHover and a MouseLeave event. The current page is stored in the Tag property of the current control, so that this value can be used to navigate to the specified page and to display the page number, if the user moves the mouse over the thumbnail.
Private Sub thumb_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs)
Dim myThumb As New TXTextControl.TextControl
For Each myThumb In Panel2.Controls
myThumb.BackColor = System.Drawing.Color.White
Next
myThumb = sender
myThumb.BackColor = System.Drawing.Color.Beige
TextControl1.Focus()
TextControl1.InputPosition = New TXTextControl.InputPosition(myThumb.Tag, 1, 0)
End SubThe thumbs are updated, if a new page is inserted to the document. You can also force the update by pressing the 'Update...' button.
The minimum requirements for this sample application are TX Text Control .NET for Windows Forms trial or TX Text Control .NET for Windows Forms Enterprise retail version and Visual Studio .NET 2003.
This sample application illustrates how to add a document thumbnail index that offers an interactive navigation through the document pages.
TX Text Control .NET for Windows Forms 16.0
Visual Basic .NET (Visual Studio 2003)
tx_sample_dotnet_thumbs.zip [117.03 KB]
December 1, 2004
