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About SysLink Controls

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A SysLink control is a window that renders marked-up text, and notifies the application when users click its embedded hyperlinks. This control provides a convenient alternative to using the Command link button. For more information, see Button Types.

Each SysLink control can support multiple hyperlinks, and you can access each hyperlink through a zero-based index. The SysLink control is defined in the ComCtl32.dll version 6, and it requires a manifest or directive that specifies that version 6 of the DLL should be used if it is available. For more information, see Enabling Visual Styles.

This article contains the following sections.

The SysLink control supports the anchor tag(<a>) along with the attributes HREF and ID. An HREF can be any protocol, such as http, ftp, and mailto. An ID is an optional name, unique within a SysLink control, and it is associated with an individual link. Links are also assigned a zero-based index according to their position within the string. This index is used to access a link.

Each link's attributes can be set either within the anchor tag for each link or by sending the LM_SETITEM message. Setting an attribute by specifying it within the initialization string merely initializes the value. You can change the value of an attribute through subsequent use of the LM_SETITEM message.

Link items can be in any one of three states, represented by the flags in the following table.

State flag Appearance and meaning
LIS_FOCUSED The link has the keyboard focus, and pressing Enter activates it.
LIS_ENABLED The link is enabled.
LIS_VISITED The user has already visited the URL represented by the link.

 

Limitations on Bidirectional Text Display

Some languages, such as Arabic or Hebrew, are written right-to-left (RTL); English is written left-to-right (LTR). Combining RTL with LTR is called bidirectional text. Mixing LTR and RTL Unicode or HTML directional markup constructs in resource strings, as bidirectional flow markers to control the flow of strings, may not produce the expected result when using a SysLink control. For instance, an LTR-marked sentence may not display correctly in RTL context.

Note

SysLink controls do not support bidirectional display under all scenarios. Use a SysLink control only if you know that a simple LTR or RTL layout is adequate. Otherwise, consider using a more advanced technology such as MSHTML.