Using The Control

The standard toolbox does not list the multimedia control. You must add the control to your toolbox window. Press Ctrl + T to display the components dialog box and select the control labeled Microsoft Multimedia Control 6.0. Click OK, VB will add the control as the last tool on your tollbox window. When you add the Multimedia MCI control to a form at design time, the control appears on the form as follows:

Figure 20.1

This Multimedia control contains a set of push buttons that issue MCI commands which resemble the commands (functions) you would expect to see on a typical compact disc player or videotape recorder. The multimedia control is an intelligent control that recognizes the capibilities of the devices attached to it. Therefore, the Play button will not be active if you've ejected a CD from the CD-ROM drive.

The multimedia control supports a property called DeviceType that, when you initialize it with the device you want to use (such as the value of CDAudio, which specifies that you want the multimedia control to control an audio CD), the multimedia control automatically enables the correct buttons.

The multimedia control automatically makes all buttons visible but disabled until you enable one or more of the buttons, or until you select a DeviceType value that determines the button collection the multimedia control is to enable and display.

The multimedia control includes a (Custom) entry in the Properties window that you can select to display a dialog box that simplifies selecting properties. For example, if you click the Controls tab, the dialog box page shown in the following figure appears. From here, you can customize exactly which buttons appear on the control.

You can also check if you want to disable or enable any button on the control.