Chaning title colour and buttons, etc.

Hi! I am quite new at VB, so I am just playing around with the features and controls. I am more used to development of C++ in a unix enviroment, so I am quite new to the gui concept.

i am quite intigued and find it lots of fun. (MFC seems to daunting right now :-/)

...Anyways, with my question.
http://bluehawk.monmouth.edu/jon/image5.jpg

even a msgbox looks cool and same scheme
http://bluehawk.monmouth.edu/jon/other1.jpg

i got a prog i found that looks like this. i think the form colour scheme is simple, but rocks! How do I get the minimise / close to look like that? The form buttons to look like that? The title bar? I dont see those as options. I managed to get my own form to have it black, etc, but button wont change, at least for me. But teh top bar. Can it be done in VB? The original prog from the screen shot is like 20k, how can that be so small? (I think it was done in VC++, but please help! Thanks a million!

It can be done be either doing some Owner Drawn by subclassing all controls and forms or by just using a graphical representation (like WinAmp, it's complete made of pictures)

BTW, MFC is for use with Visual C++, so you don't have to worry about it in VB :).

i still dont fully understand. What does this subclassing mean. (I never said i was a professional programmer, i just do it for a hobby!)

You can also use "skinning" controls, there is one on www.vbaccelerator.com .

In a VB context, subclassing means getting messages intended for a particular window routed through your application. It allows you to intercept and possible modify or block these messages.

It's not really something you should play with until you have a little more experience in Windows programming. Most of the time it is really only used for doing flashy graphic and UI stuff, so not really necessary. It is an absolutely must for professional multimedia though.

oh okay, so at least it wasnt something i dozed off about in comp sci classes :-D

Anyways, is there an easy way, or so to speak a method where i can just modify the title bar and the exit buttons like that screen shot(s).

I dont know how advanced i need to get, its just for fun, even the application i am making is a dumb little utility i am working on. but i like it to look cool at least!

so...pretty much i know its possible, but how can it be done, an API call?? or something?

Thanks!!

Originally posted by weinrj
i still dont fully understand. What does this subclassing mean. (I never said i was a professional programmer, i just do it for a hobby!)

I just do it for a hobby too ;)

If you want to start customizing forms like that, you're going to have to do some serious studying. There are some folks on this forum that have been programming for 15+ years that haven't investigated that stuff because it is almost all GDI32 API, its tricky, and you crash your IDE 15-20 times a day (or maybe just I do) from the subclassing and hooking. It takes patience, dedication, and a whole lot of time.

Either that or you can try ArnoutV's method of using pure pictures/images, which while lo-tech can provide some stunning forms and you don't have to worry about the API stuff.

Or you could go to somewhere like www.softshape.com (http://www.softshape.com), spend some money, and download their skinning component.

I would worry about things other than making your forms look cool if you are just a novice/hobbyist, but that's me.

Good luck.

Me: "Check out my new program. Is that not the coolest looking form you ever saw!?"

You: "Yes, that's really nice. What's the program do?"

Me: "Do?"

:p

I do see your point on that, but my coding of the form is about 95% done. I just got some debugging to do...I just want the form to look cool. Initially, maybe I will incorproate a skinning feature later, and perhaps maybe now, if i want to invest in such controls, but for the time being, a simple cool colour scheme is going to be great--and yea the program actually does do something. I just need to debug it b/c its not perfect yet!