Change the Shape of the form?

[RohanWest]

What can i use to change the way in which the form appears,

Is it possible to change the shape of a form, for exapmle i would like to create a star shape form and still place controls on it....


Rohan

[kleve]

What you're talking about involves using a 'skin'. I've seen posts here on that very topic, afaik it's not simple to do in VB, but I imagine it can be done. Try searching

http://msdn.microsoft.com

for info on skins.

[Toot]

Yes it can be done and no, it isn't easy. It does make things look flash but you have to weigh up the pros of a whizzy-looking form with the cons of the amount of time it takes to get it looking right and the fact that you are quite definitely moving away from the standard "windows look and feel" that everyone takes great joy (!!) in trying to achieve.

I've had to rebuild my machine so I haven't got the url of where I found all the stuff about it (vb-square????) but it did involve skins.

Toot

[kleve]

I have to agree with Toot - I would say you're much better off staying with the standard windows interface. It's *standard* which is a huge benefit (just imagine if everyone had their own forms written in weird and wonderful(?) ways). In adittion, Microsoft have (probably) spent a huge amount of money on things like usablility studies on various interface designs etc.. It's fair to say that a degree of customisation is good but it should be done at the user level, not by the developer. The most as programers we should do is to give the freedom to the user to modify the interface if they want. Just my 2c worth!