Draw your control's skin using a pattern brush

• Download demo project - 12 Kb

Introduction

This article shows how to use a pattern brush to give your controls a similar look and feel.

When you use a brush, you can specify the origin of the brush. So, if all your controls use the same brush, your controls have same feature. If you handle the OnCtlColor() and return a pattern brush then you can do this. This is very simple method.

I used code similar to the following functions in my source code.

• UnrealizeObject() : The UnrealizeObject function resets the origin of a brush or resets a logical palette.
• CDC::SetBrushOrg() : This method specifies the origin that the GDI assigns to the next brush that the application selects for the device context.

The Main Function

HBRUSH CPatternDlg::OnCtlColor(CDC* pDC, CWnd* pWnd, UINT nCtlColor) 
{ 
    HBRUSH hbr = CDialog::OnCtlColor(pDC, pWnd, nCtlColor); 

    CPoint pt(0,0); 

    if (this != pWnd) 
    { 
        CRect rc; 
        pWnd->GetWindowRect(&rc); 
        ScreenToClient(&rc); 
        pt.x = -(rc.left + GetSystemMetrics(SM_CXDLGFRAME) - 1) % 55; 
        pt.y = -(rc.top + GetSystemMetrics(SM_CYDLGFRAME) - 1)% 53; 
         
    } 

    // Set brushOrg
    // This is very important!!
    brush.UnrealizeObject(); 
    pDC->SetBrushOrg(pt); 

    // return new skin-brush!
    return (HBRUSH)brush; 
} 

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