[RESOLVED] [2005] Problems with custom shaped Forms

[Neverbirth]

I personally hate non standard/skinned applications that act like what you are describing.

Well, I don't find those two features that important, but I don't like it either, that's why I'm implementing them. They are, AFAIK, the only things missing. I find to be more annoying when proffessional apps don't provide a right tab order on forms.

People all the time bash Microsoft for not conforming to standards, yet they release an OS with certain standards in how windows should look and behave under certain actions, and then developers try to throw that all out the window because they think they can do a better job.

The thing is they are the first ones to break standars, WMP, Office 2007, custom controls on tons of their apps, etc. I've never bashed them for it tho, I find it to be a normal thing, nor I do think I can do better, just want to give my app another personal touch, and I know it will attract some more people that way.

The end result is usually a program that looks nothing like what people are used to, so right away there is a learning curve just to figure out how to do stuff. The next issue is the fact that you will likely end up breaking some standard functionality that people use (even if you don't). So even when you figure out ways to implement the functionality you just broke because you had to make your app look "custom" will you think of all functionality?

I'm not trying to make something bizarre, nor extremely non-standard, and I do know that making some things in a more visual and therefore intuitive way is simpler for them. I wish most of my end-users would know about all those functionalities... when I started making some of my first applications I had to rewrite some of them because the users found too hard to use treeviews for some hierarchical lists, and they had some complications using some context menus...

What about standard shortcut keys in windows for doing things like minimizing/maximizing windows, etc... there are a whole bunch of shortcuts that may now not work correctly with a borderless form (which is what windows sees the form as) and then what? Are you going to implement system wide keyboard hooks so your app will work correctly when a user hits a shortcut key combination?

Adding back the shortcuts isn't something difficult and already added them, they are just a bother to add back.

Lastly, I may end switching over drawing the window using native APIs, as I already have some base for that on a previous project, or I may not add it at the end (don't think so heh), this is a personal project for some familiars and friends, so I don't have any time frame to finish it.

Thks for the link Clanguage, I'll have a look at it.

LATE EDIT: After looking at the samples attached on thread Clanguage linked it solved the rest of my doubts. Thank you .