10Tec/vbAccelerator ImageList OCX
General info
vbAccelerator ImageList OCX was developed by Steve McMahon and published on his website vbAccelerator.com. We started to use this excellent replacement for the standard Microsoft ImageList control from the Microsoft Common Controls package (MSCOMCTL.OCX) in our iGrid ActiveX demos in 2002.
Over the years, both we and our customers have discovered bugs while using this excellent control. Moreover, vbAccelerator ImageList lacked such sought-after features as support for 32-bit icons and PNG images with alpha channel. Unfortunately, Steve McMahon stopped further development of his talented tools, but he gave us permission to support and develop vbAccelerator ImageList OCX. As a result, the 10Tec version of vbAccelerator ImageList appeared. In our version we have fixed all the bugs found and implemented new features and enhancements that make the control friendlier for the developer. The control was recompiled with a new class and program identifiers (CLSID and ProgID) in order to avoid any conflicts with the original version. You can find out more about all the changes in the comprehensive What's New documents.
10Tec ImageList remains completely free like the original vbAccelerator ImageList. The full source code of the component and its demo is also available for downloading.
Classic Edition and Modern Edition
The original vbAccelerator ImageList OCX was developed in Visual Basic 6. The 10Tec improved version developed between 2002 and 2024 was also created in Visual Basic 6. As a result, those OCX files were only 32-bit and could only be used in 32-bit applications.
With the advent of a new VB6/VBA-compatible development environment called twinBASIC, it became possible to create a true 64-bit version of this ImageList OCX. In 2025, we created what is known as the Modern Edition of the ImageList control. It includes a true 64-bit ImageList OCX that opens up the possibility of using the control in 64-bit Microsoft Office and other 64-bit environments. The previous version of 10Tec ImageList OCX developed with VB6 is now called "Classic Edition".
Demo application
Below you see a screenshot of the ImageList demo application. It demonstrates the main features of our enhanced ImageList control:
As you can see, the image list component allows you to draw the images on a surface using the selected, disabled or cut effects. At run-time, you can upload images into your image lists not only from a file on your hard drive, but also from a resource of your app or even from a VB PictureBox object. You can get any image from your image list as the standard VB Picture object as well.
And look carefully at the bottom part of the demo form: our implementation of vbAccelerator ImageList OCX supports 32-bit translucent PNG images!