Hot Spot control

A hot spot is a designated area on a user Dialog box that will assign a specified value to a list or Boolean attribute, when the run time user clicks the mouse on the hot spot. This enables an almost endless variety of controls to be implemented by the XpertRule developer.

When the runtime user clicks the mouse on a hot spot, the hot spot area can be set to highlight the hot spot outline (the ShowOutline property), thus indicating to the user that a selection has been made. A typical technique is to make a hot spot that sits on top of a bitmap picture (or icon) - when the user clicks on the picture, it will then either invert or be outlined. The ShowBorder property can be used to enclose the hotspot area within a standard border.

If you are considering the use of hot spots as a means of control by using your own graphical alternative images of "buttons", then you may also want to consider the option of making a standard button invisible (by setting the button's IsArea property and Visible property to True).

Hot Spot control TiedItem property specifies which List or Boolean Attribute (or other List or Boolean type object) is to be captured by this control. You should create further Hot Spot controls for each possible value of the list/Boolean, and set the Value property for each control as appropriate.

For help on other properties see the complete alphabetic list of the Properties of Dialog Controls.

Shortcut tips

You can use the right mouse-click menu on a List Box or Drop-down Combo Box control and select Convert to Hot Spots to change the whole list to a set of hot spots. However, this would not be available for a multi-select list.