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Fully Customizable XP Progress Bar (with examples)

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4.80/5 (118 votes)

Oct 1, 2005

CPOL

2 min read

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A progress bar like the WinXP progress bar control, but completely customizable.

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.