Question

In my WinAPI program I use PropertySheet for a settings dialog box. I use property sheet with pages (tabs), i.e. I use PSH_PROPSHEETPAGE flag. But the software now have too many parameters for such a type of property sheet. So I want to use PropertySheet with treeview: the treeview on the left and the page with paramerets for the currently selected item in the treeview – on the right.
How can I do this? Can my current property sheet be modified for this and how?
(using only WinAPI, no MFC)

Answer 1

Standard property sheet is no longer good enough for you, so you basically have two choices here. You can either design a window (modal or modeless, dialog based or not) to host all your controls in a single view, with tree view, possibly tab control as well, and showing/hiding elements to follow tree view selection. And you will move all your controls into this window.

Or instead, you can create a similar window which hosts property pages. On tree selection change you will switch property pages as if they are selected by tabs in standard property sheet. The point is that you can use your existing pages intact making this new settings windows imitating behavior of standard property sheet. This is perhaps a more complicated thing to do, but should be flexible enough to do once and accept various pages, and you don’t also need to touch your existing pages code leaving it good for both standard and this custom sheet with a tree.

Both ways assume you need to do quite some work since you are giving up using a standard piece of code – the property sheet window.