Those Cool control buttons in MSN Explorer

[Unicornssecond]

Does anyone know the API calls necesary to instantiate the MSN look and feel to windows.

I did a little trawling with dependancy walker and found that it appears to be a number of ordinal calls to the comctrl32.dll.

Is there a published API or am I chasing my tail again

[crispin]

can you post some images.....


of the top of my head I'd guess they are using CommCtrl ver 6, which allows you to do all those XP'ish things, including the "new look"......

[Unicornssecond]

I am fairly sure that it is comctrl 6.0 that is what is being used and I get the inpression that what ever the call is it works like clt3d did in he win3.1 days, What I am looking for are the declares for this devil. I woul like to use it.

I have observed that any windows including common control windows which the program opens automatically get the make over, therefore I am assuming that it is a single api which registers the style.

Copy of Window title bar attached.

[MerrionComputin]

Hmm - note that the minimise/maximise/close buttons on the title bar are not true buttons (they don't have a window handle or anything) so what has happened is that the drawing of the non client area of the form has been subclassed and the special button drawing takes place when processing the WM_NCPAINT message.
I'm guessing that one of the ordinal calls performs this special drawing when given a valid device context for the window non client area and the button states - so if you could find out what parameters it takes you could intercept the WM_NCPAINT on your forms and paint them using this non-standard function..?

[crispin]

you could always just skin your form.....
http://www.vbaccelerator.com/codelib/gfx/skin.htm

[Unicornssecond]

I will have a look at the skinning of the form, but this thing that MS is using effects the client are and any child forms. In the case of MSN6 the Dialin Dialog comes up with the same pastels and the graduated buttons.