Fully Customizable XP Progress Bar (with examples)

• Download source files - 27.4 Kb
• Download demo project - 14.7 Kb

Introduction

I've developed an XpProgressBar that looks like the one used by the default WinXP theme. I have added a lot of features to fully customize its look.

Very important !!!

If you update the position of the progress bar in a tight loop or in a CPU intensive area and you feel that the bar is not repainted, use the following code in the place where you have problem:

Application.DoEvents();

Please don't use Invalidate(), .Refresh() or .Update(). This can result in low performance and sometimes these don't work.

XpProgressBar features

The control offers the following features:

• Good performance

  The XpProgressBar doesn't use much of the CPU because it uses a double buffer feature that performs painting operations offline to an image and later to the screen (this works at least three times faster).

• Non flicking double buffer

  This control is implemented with a double buffer to provide smooth animation without any flicking and small paint time.

• Anti alias text

  All the strings painted in the progress bar are drawn using anti alias hint to provide better quality.

• Text shadow

  You can set the shadow to the text and customize its color and the alpha channel.

• Fully customizable

  As you can see, every property of the progress bar can be set to provide a beautiful look.

The properties of the control:

• BackgroundImage
• ColorBackground
• ColorBarBorder
• ColorBarCenter
• ColorsXp

  Reset the colors to WinXP default.

• ColorText
• GradientStyle
• SteepDistance
• SteepWidth
• TextShadow
• TextShadowAlpha

GradientStyle

You can set the GradientStyle property to obtain some of these styles:

Animation sample

The following picture shows an animation sample with different timers and looks:

License

The control and the source code are completely free for commercial and non commercial use.

History

• 2005-10-1: Article submitted.

• 1.5
  • Improved the performance of Paint algorithms.
  • Alpha text
  • The image on the ProgressBar looks like a logo (with alpha of course, jeje).
  • Can disable Anti Alias Text.
• 2.0
  • Vertical ProgressBar (not only horizontal)
  • Text align
  • Border color

Updates

Visit my page Marcos Meli and come back with updates soon.

This article has no explicit license attached to it but may contain usage terms in the article text or the download files themselves. If in doubt please contact the author via the discussion board below.

A list of licenses authors might use can be found here