window controls with styles and animations

i've been programming win32 for a long time and now i would like to make visually advanced windows.

i'm talking about the buttons which change color when the mouse is over them and which have diffferent themes instead of the dull look of windows dialogs. or animated controls which appear in a stylish way on the screen.

i don't suppose i can do all these just using the GDI. and i'm wondering if i have to use libraries to achieve this, or is pure win32 enough?

i'm not sure what i said is understandable

Check out the "owner draw" features of windows controls if you don't want to use widget libraries.

Mouseover effects are fairly simple... subclass the control and play with WM_MOUSEMOVE and WM_LBUTTONDOWN / WM_LBUTTONUP messages to change the button colour or appearance.

Another simple tactic is to use GetCursorPos() and WindowFromPoint() to manage mouseovers in your main message loop.

Windows API is a monster 30,000+ function calls...
if you don't have it already you should download the Windows SDK from.... HERE