Same Old Windows Forms

[vis781]

Has anyone ever wondered why MS have made it so incredibly hard to customise a form. We are given a standard shape, and a few color schemes via theming. It is possible to alter windows forms but you have to resort to gdi+ and it can get a bit messy.
Does anyone know why MS didn't provide us with a way to change the bordercolor of a form?, or the colors of the control box buttons?, or even be able to put the control box buttons in the middle of the form!!? I know you'd never want to do that, but in general it's certainly some functionality i'd like to see.
Am i the only one who has ever looked at a windows form and thought, 'I wonder what it'd look like in yellow!'

 

[JohnH]

This is mainly because of how windows are built and managed in the core of the operating system, the client area of a window is managed by the application, the non-client area like title bar with control boxes and borders are managed by the system. There exist flags to toggle border style and control box options, but not to individually customize this at application level without total owner draw. There simply don't exist functionality in the Windows operating system core to do this. Theming applies at system level for all applications window appearance. Have a look at this http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/e...rinterface/windowing/windows/aboutwindows.asp

 

[Administrator]

Developer Express is coming out with a new update to their awesome suite, one of the new items is extending their skinning engine to skinnable forms. See examples at the bottom of this page. If there is ever a suite to own, this is it! It's in the next VB.NET Forums Review, coming soon.

 

[vis781]

Thats about the most comprehensive suite i've seen, and not bad value for money considering. I like the look of the skinned forms, i'm glad someone has finally sat down and figured out a way to give those old forms a fresh new look. I'll look forward to the review. It's just a shame that MS didn't provide a way for us to do it ourselves, or maybe they haven't for a good reaon??