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.