Tag: win32
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Drawing non-themed push buttons in Windows
When visual styles are enabled in Windows, one may use the DrawThemeBackground function to draw themed push buttons. However, users of Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 can disable visual styles by selecting the Windows Classic theme or one of the High Contrast themes (and in Windows 2000 and earlier, visual styles weren’t available […]
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When should a program’s UI animations be disabled?
Modern frameworks like the Windows Presentation Foundation, its relative Silverlight and the upcoming Windows Runtime make it easy to add animations to a program’s graphical user interface. When implemented well, animations subtly improve the user experience and can demonstrate a high level of polish in your application. The Zune client software and Windows Live Messenger […]
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Windows Theme Fonts Redux & Sample Code
View source on GitHub. In a post earlier this year, I investigated how to retrieve information about theme fonts in Windows. Briefly, the Visual Styles APIs can be used when visual styles are enabled, but values need to be hard-coded (to some extent) otherwise. Andrew Powell commented on my previous post noting difficulties in implementing […]
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Windows Theme Fonts
View source on GitHub. Update: See this post for a sample implementation in WPF. Have you ever wondered how to access the various font colours and styles found throughout Windows, such as that of the ‘Main Instruction’ text in the Task Dialog shown above? If you are using WPF, the SystemFonts class might sound promising […]
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WM_DWMCOLORIZATIONCOLORCHANGED doesn’t give the Aero Glass base colour
From MSDN: WM_DWMCOLORIZATIONCOLORCHANGED Message Sent to all top-level windows when the colorization color has changed. Parameters wParam: Specifies the new colorization color. The color format is 0xAARRGGBB. lParam: Specifies whether the new color is blended with opacity. We receive this message when the Aero Glass colour changes. Unfortunately, the value contained in wParam is not […]
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Small Icon Size & DPI in Windows
The GetSystemMetrics function in Windows retrieves system metrics and configuration settings. One such metric is the recommended size (width and height) of ‘small icons’: Small icons typically appear in window captions and in small icon view. Another place where small icons show up is the notification area. MSDN contains a guide to Creating DPI-Aware Applications. […]