Designing a Dialog Box

There are several steps required to build a dialog box.

1. Implement "dumb" dialog boxes, concentrating on the appearance of the dialog box and its items. These are dialog boxes and items with no commands, hooks, or access strings.
2. Add access strings where appropriate. An access string defines a program variable to associate with a dialog item. This allows you to change program variables (called settings) from a dialog box without using a hook function. Element placement and manipulation commands will reference these settings. The MDL debugger is ideal for inspecting access strings while the application is running.
   For information on access strings, see Dialog Box Manager Overview. For more information on using the MDL debugger, see DebuggingMDLApplications.
3. You may need to extend the basic functionality of the dialog box using dialog hooks. Hook functions establish relationships between dialog items, initiate processing beyond what the dialog manager does, or define the behavior of generic items (user-defined dialog box items).

For more information about dialog hooks, see DialogBoxManagerHookFunctions.