Introduction

This displays a constant list of colors to the user. If none of the available colors is appropriate for the task at hand, the user can click the Define Custom Colors >> button to expand the dialog box:

The expanded Color dialog box allows the user either to select one of the preset colors or to custom create a color by specifying its red, green, and blue values.

The user can change the color in four different areas. The top left section displays a list of 48 predefined colors. If the desired color is not in that section, the user can click and drag the mouse in the multi-colored palette. The user can also drag the right bar that displays a range based on the color of the palette; the user can scroll up and down by dragging the arrow. For more precision, the user can type the Red, Green and Blue values. Each uses an integral value that ranges from 1 to 255.

To provide the Color dialog box to your application, from the Dialogs section of the Toolbox, you can click the ColorDialog button and click anywhere on the form. The Color dialog box is implemented through the ColorDialog class, which is based on the CommonDialog class that is the ancestor to all Windows common dialog boxes of the .NET Framework. To display the dialog box to the user, call the CommonDialog.ShowDialog() method. Here is an example:

Imports System.Drawing
Imports System.Windows.Forms

Module Exercise

    Public Class Starter
        Inherits Form

        Dim components As System.ComponentModel.Container

        Public Sub New()
            InitializeComponent()
        End Sub

        Public Sub InitializeComponent()
            Dim dlgColor As ColorDialog = New ColorDialog()

            dlgColor.ShowDialog()
        End Sub

    End Class

    Function Main() As Integer

        Dim frmStart As Starter = New Starter

        Application.Run(frmStart)

        Return 0
    End Function

End Module

This would produce: