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Well simply put, i want to make my application have a skin that is the same for every computer.
Even if it is as simple as the standard WinXP skin, i just want something that will be the same.
Can anyone give me any information on how this can be done so i can research it myself? Thanks!
Are you going to be running this application on only Windows operating systems or are you going to run it on Linux\Unix and Windows targets?
LT
Windows only, sorry for not clarifying
I'm believe that you are going to have to paint the non-client areas of your applicaiton so that it looks how you want it to. You will find that there are no classes or events in the Framework Class Library that allows you to do this. This means that you are going to have to do some P/Invoke (AKA Platform Invocation) Here is a great place to start. If you can't get to where you want from here then just post back.
http://www.geekswithblogs.net/kobush...rderForms.aspx
Les
i'll give it a shot, though i am quite beginner in this realm, i'll see what happends :p
All so look into the function SetWindowTheme() in the dll uxtheme.dll. MSDN has the details of this function.
LT
There is an article in September's MSDN magazine on this topic. Read the Spice It Up article by Bill Wagner.
September MSDN Magazine
LT
thanks for the update :D :cool: :)
Thats magazine only right? Might have to actually buy a magazine for once in a long time lol
It isn't that great of an article, so don't buy it just for that article.
LT
15.2 Drawing Shaped Forms and Windows Controls
Normally, all Windows controls and forms are rectangular, but what if we want to draw them in nonrectangular shapes? We can do this by setting the Region property. The Region property of a form or a control represents that window's region, which is a collection of pixels within a form or control where the operating system permits drawing; no portion of a form that lies outside of the window region is displayed. To draw nonrectangular shapes, we trick the system into drawing only the region of a control.
Let's draw a circular form. We can use the GraphicsPath class to draw graphics paths. In this application we'll create a circular form and a circular picture box, which will display an image. To test this application, we follow these simple steps:
We create a Windows application and add a button and a picture box to the form. Then we set the Text property of the button control to "Exit" and write the following line on the button click event handler:
Next we add a reference to the System.Drawing.Drawing2D namespace so that we can use the GraphicsPath class:Code:this.Close();
On the form-load event handler, we create a Bitmap object from a file and load the bitmap in the picture box as shown in the following code snippet.Code:using System.Drawing.Drawing2D;
The last step is to set the form and picture box as circular. We can modify the InitializeComponent method and add code as in Listing 15.5 at the end of the method, or we can add the code on the form-load event handler. We just set the Region property of the form and picture box to the region of our GraphicsPath object.Code:Image bmp = Bitmap.FromFile("aphoto.jpg"); pictureBox1.Image = bmp;
Listing 15.5 Setting a form and picture box control as circular
When we build and run the application; the output will look like Figure 15.3. Because we have eliminated the normal title bar controls, we must implement an Exit button.Code:private void Form1_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e) { // Create a rectangle Rectangle rect = new Rectangle(0,0,100,100); // Create a graphics path GraphicsPath path = new GraphicsPath(); // Add an ellipse to the graphics path path.AddEllipse(rect); // Set the Region property of the picture box // by creating a region from the path pictureBox1.Region = new Region(path); rect.Height += 200; rect.Width += 200; path.Reset(); path.AddEllipse(rect); this.Region = new Region(path); // Create an image from a file and // set the picture box's Image property Image bmp = Bitmap.FromFile("aphoto.jpg"); pictureBox1.Image = bmp; }