XP like colour progress bar

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• Download source - 6.68 Kb

Introduction

This is a simple progress bar control that imitates the XP visual style. The control inherits Windows.Forms.Control and the reason to add another progress bar here is that there was no XP style progress bar with the ability to change its colour. I needed a red coloured progress bar to indicate error but the normal XP progress bar does not allow colour change. Also, I needed that nice XP style because my program was using the XP visual styles. The bars are drawn just like the XP progress bar. The whole bars are drawn, not parts from them, depending on the value.

Background

For the progress bar, I used the very nice progress bar control developed by Alan Zhao. Basically, the main functionality is provided by him, I improved the painting of the control to make it XP like.

Control Properties

• BarColor

  The primary color of ColorProgressBar.

• BorderColor

  The border color of ColorProgressBar.

• FillStyle

  Bar styles, "Solid" or "Dashed".

• Maximum

  The maximum value of ColorProgressBar.

• Minimum

  The minimum value or the initial value of ColorProgressBar.

• Value

  The current value of ColorProgressBar.

• Step

  The value of each increment or decrement when you call methods PerformStep() and PerformStepBack().

Control Methods

• PerformStep()

  Call the PerformStep() method to increase the value set in the Step property.

• PerformStepBack()

  Call the PerformStepBack() method to decrease the value set in the Step property.

• Increment(int value)

  Call the Increment() method to increase the integer value you specify.

• Decrement(int value)

  Call the Decrement() method to decrease the integer value you specify.

Painting code

// The region of the progress bar!
int leftbar = 1;
int topbar = 1;
int X = this.Width-1;
int Y = this.Height-1;
Point[] points = {   new Point(leftbar + 2, topbar), 
         new Point(X-2, topbar), 
         new Point(X-1, topbar + 1), 
         new Point(X, topbar + 2), 
         new Point(X, Y-3), 
         new Point(X-1, Y-2), 
         new Point(X-2, Y-1), 
         new Point(leftbar + 2, Y), 
         new Point(leftbar + 1, Y-2), 
         new Point(leftbar, Y-3), 
         new Point(leftbar, topbar + 2),
         new Point(leftbar + 1, topbar + 1),
        };    
GraphicsPath path = new GraphicsPath();
path.AddLines(points);
Region reg = new Region(path);
e.Graphics.FillRegion(Brushes.White, reg);

This is the definition of the region of the progress bar.

Points of Interest

The project is interesting if you want to learn how to simulate and to draw controls like they are drawn in Windows XP.

History

No history yet.

Thanks

Thanks again to Alan Zhao for his great work. You can check out his work here.

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