[2005] Skinning applications, without external tools

[Inuyasha1782]

I have googled all the different ways of searching for tutorials on skinning in Visual Basic .NET but I cannot seem to find anything interesting. All I get back is freeware/shareware skinning applications that "enhance" your programs. The only problem there is that I do not want to burden my end user with all the skinning files and ActiveX controls. All I need is for someone to please point me in the direction of some good tutorials that could at least get me started so I can start playing around with my application. Suggestions or comments are also welcome.

Thanks.

[gigemboy]

Well each form and control has properties to change its appearance (background image, font, color, size, etc). It would be a matter of changing all of these options on form load of the program, in some sort of way, with the settings in some sort of file that is associated with the program's current "theme" that is set for it... simple but tedious...

[jmcilhinney]

My suggestion is to not bother. Spending time tarting up your application is time not valuably spent in my opinion. Genuinely useful apps that work is what users really want.

If you really want to head down that road then it comes down to owner-drawn controls and GDI+, which is how you draw EVERYTHING in .NET apps. That's what you should be searching for.

[Inuyasha1782]

Well the fact is, my program is going against another's, and to be truthful mine is more effecient, but the other has the great UI. I'm not looking to create another Winamp here, but more on the line of doing a little bit extra to modify how controls look. For instance, in applications such as Macromedia Flash you can edit certain parts of controls. Like the progress bar. You can edit the image that appears on the left side, the right side, and the image that stretches in the middle, thus creating your own style of progress bar.