Dialog boxes

A dialog box is like a panel, with an implicit frame surrounding it. A dialog box may be modal (no other window in this application is active and the calling program flow is suspended) or modeless (any window may be interacted with and control returns immediately to the program). With dialog boxes, creation of separate frames and panels is not necessary, and under Windows 3.1, additional functionality is added 'for free', such as tabbing between items. Any panel item may be attached to a dialog box since wxDialogBox is derived from the wxPanel.

Note that under Windows 3.1, modal dialogs have to be emulated using modeless dialogs and a message loop. This is because Windows 3.1 expects the contents of a modal dialog to be loaded from a resource file or created on receiving a dialog initialization message. This is too restrictive for wxWindows, where any window may be created and possibly displayed before its contents are created.

Standard dialogs are provided for printer settings, file selection, short messages, single-line text string entry and scrolling single-selection lists.