About Buttons

A button is a control the that user can click to provide input to an application.

There are several types of buttons and one or more button styles to distinguish between buttons of the same type. The user clicks a button by using the mouse or keyboard. Clicking a button typically changes its visual appearance and state (from checked to cleared, for example). The system, the button, and the application cooperate in changing the button's appearance and state. A button can send messages to its parent window, and a parent window can send messages to a button. Some buttons are painted by the system, and some by the application. Buttons can be used alone or in groups and can appear with or without application-defined text (a label). They belong to the BUTTON window class.

The following topics are discussed in this section.

In this section

Topic	Description
Button Messages	This topic discusses messages that are used with buttons.
Button States	This section discusses how selecting a button changes its state and how the application should respond.
Button Types	This topic discusses the different kinds of buttons.