The following 'things' are available:
Form Thing - When you first create a form for a window or dialog, a number of fundamental design questions should come to mind. Will the user want to resize the window? Does it need a maximize button? Minimize button? An icon? If the window is not sizable, should it have a border? Double or single? Should it have a title bar? What are the foreground and background colors? Do you need to change the mouse pointer?
Form Thing helps you decide these questions by letting you quickly develop, test, and modify a prototype of your form before you add it to your project. Once you've made the basic design decisions, just tell Form Thing to create a new form to your specification. Then you can shift your attention to other matters, such as adding controls and writing code.
Nudge Thing - Have you ever tried to lay out a series of buttons or check boxes on a crowded form? Nudge is the perfect tool for this job. It can move, grow, or shrink controls in increments of one or more pixels. Controls can be "nudged" diagonally and in any of the four polar directions.
Nudge also positions, aligns, and sizes groups of controls. What's especially handy is that you can just drop a number of controls on your VB form, size one of them the way you want them all to look, and then tell Nudge to make the others the same size as the first. This tool is also good for getting labels to line up with text boxes. You line one label up with its text box and Nudge will do the same for all the rest.
The positions of controls can be locked so a mouse touch does not inadvertently disturb the layout. All actions can be undone or redone-stepping backward and forward through every change made during the current session.
MsgBox Thing - This tool puts an interface on Visual Basic's MsgBox function, making it easy for you to build Visual Basic message boxes on the fly. All options are represented visually, so construction of a message box is a simple matter of pointing at an option and clicking to select it. A test mode displays a prototype of the message box, so you can tinker with settings and quickly see the results. When everything is how you want it, MsgBox Thing generates the code and copies it to the Windows clipboard.
You can tailor MsgBox Thing's coding style to match your own. For example, some programmers like to use string literals for message text, others prefer variables or expressions. MsgBox Thing can produce code in either style. It can adapt to your programming style in a variety of other ways as well. Like other prototyping tools in the ToolThings toolset, MsgBox Thing lets you save templates for message boxes, making it possible to create house styles for common application messages.
Tab Thing - Have you ever tried to lay out a series of buttons or check boxes on a crowded form? Nudge is the perfect tool for this job. It can move, grow, or shrink controls in increments of one or more pixels. Controls can be "nudged" diagonally and in any of the four polar directions.
Nudge also positions, aligns, and sizes groups of controls. What's especially handy is that you can just drop a number of controls on your VB form, size one of them the way you want them all to look, and then tell Nudge to make the others the same size as the first. This tool is also good for getting labels to line up with text boxes. You line one label up with its text box and Nudge will do the same for all the rest. The positions of controls can be locked so a mouse touch does not inadvertently disturb the layout. All actions can be undone or redone-stepping backward and forward through every change made during the current session.
CMDialog Thing - CMDialog Thing supplies the interactive design feature missing from Visual Basic's common dialog control. It lets you set dialog flags and properties in design mode and immediately see the result without writing a single line of code. When you have a dialog the way you want it, CMDialog Thing generates the code and copies it to the clipboard. All you need to do is insert the contents of the clipboard at the appropriate spot in your event procedure.
Dent Thing - Dent Thing indents code. It can act upon the current procedure, the current file, or the entire project. There are two ways to use Dent. If you like to indent code while you work, you'll probably want to keep Dent running minimized on your desktop. Whenever you need to fix up the indentations in the routine you are working on, just press the key combination Ctrl+Shift+D. Your code will line up instantly.
On the other hand, you may go into overdrive from time to time and in one nonstop session of coding bang out an entire module or even a whole project. When the dust settles, you can ask Dent to step in and tidy up. Just tell it to indent the project or the file and kick back while Dent Thing does the work.
Type Thing - Type Thing is the tool to use when you are working with user-defined data types. It can keep a library of type structures and insert a declaration in your code. It can scan your current project, store any type structures that it finds, and then help you make assignments to elements of an instance of a declared structure. You can also use Type Thing to declare constants and global variables, or to make assignments using constants or global variables.
Type Thing's Auto-Str$(), Auto-Trim$(), and Auto-Val() options simplify the process of making assignments. Once the necessary options have been selected, Type Thing generates code and pastes it to the clipboard or, optionally, directly into the current routine. A test button lets you view the code before it is copied.
BlockOut Thing - BlockOut Thing comments out or uncomments blocks of code, making it easy to disable an extended selection all at once rather than having to comment line by line, one line at a time. You can optionally stamp comments with the date and time.
You can also use BlockOut to insert boilerplate comments. You may want to use this feature to place a "flower box" prolog at the top of every routine. You can save standard comments as templates for later reuse, and certain variable information -- date, time, project name, file name, and routine name -- can be entered automatically if you include BlockOut's field codes in your block comment.
Additionally, BlockOut can remove commented code from a selection in the Visual Basic editing window. Although you'll want to use this feature carefully, it can come in handy when you've copied a chunk of code from another project, dropped it into the current project, and commented out everything you don't need.
Call Thing - Call Thing is a tool designed to help you build calls. It can come in handy at that point in a project when you find yourself having to check the syntax, return type, or the name of a routine before making a call.
Just tell Call Thing to scan your project and memorize all of its subroutines and functions. Then keep it minimized on your desktop. When you want to insert a call, pop up Call Thing and just point and click. Or, even better, stay right where you are, type a the first few characters of the routine's name and press Alt + C. Call Thing will complete the call for you.
Call Thing can also handle declarations. If you are using someone else's DLLs, scan their declaration file. Or recycle your own work by scanning a project that has already has the proper declarations. Whatever the source of your information, once it is in Call Thing's memory it becomes infinitely more manageable. When you decide to use an external function, let Call Thing hunt down the declaration and insert it in your code.
Compress Thing - Compress Thing identifies and removes unreferenced routines, variables, constants, and instances of user-defined types, as well as any debugging statements, producing a clean set of output files, which you can then compile.
Compress Thing does not actually change your original source files. Duplicate copies of "compressed" forms and modules are placed in a separate directory, which you designate.