Draw Skin Window Using Pure Win32 API

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Introduction

How can you make an application's own skin window without MFC extension UI libraries like BGCControlBar, Xtreme Toolkit and so on? This article uses pure Win32 API to find the answer.

Contents

• Windows Messages Should Be Processed
• The Class SkinWindow
• Skin Window Example
• The Problems Existing in the SkinWindow Class

Windows Messages

For the beginner, I want to explain the window messages that should be processed. Anybody who wants to draw a window should process the window messages as below:

WM_NCLBUTTONUP<br />WM_NCLBUTTONDOWN<br />WM_NCLBUTTONDBLCLK<br />WM_NCRBUTTONUP<br />WM_NCRBUTTONDOWN<br />WM_NCMOUSEMOVE 

Class SkinWindow

We should create a class named SkinWindow that takes responsibility for painting the window. The class SkinWindow defines some functions to process the special window's message.

Example

Firstly, we create a new Win32 application that includes SkinWindow in its project.

#include "skinwindow.h"

Secondly, we should define a global variant in the main CPP file.

CSkinWindow SkinWin;

Thirdly, we load the skin from resource at the function InitInstance.

SkinWin.Load(hInstance, hWnd);

Last, we should add some code in the function WndProc to process the special window's messages.

// handle some special window's message here
if( SkinWin.IsHandledMessage( message ) )
    return SkinWin.WndProc( hWnd, message, wParam, lParam );

Problems/Bugs

When you size or drag and move a window as fast as you can, the monitor will flash and the window will take up more CPU percent. I've tried many approaches, but the problem persists. Is there anyone who can resolve it? The problem's picture is like below.

Additional Notes

This is by no means a finished product! This is my first attempt at writing a terribly complicated Win32 application library. I want to tell a beginner how to skin a window using pure Win32 API without MFC and give the beginner some hints to comprehensive window messages. I wanted something similar to SkinWindow in functionality, but without the overhead of MFC. There will be bugs and errors! I hope that you find this code useful. If you have any improvements/suggestions, comments/flames or questions please post them here.

History

• 14 September, 2007 -- Original version posted

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)