Visual Face Lift - Skin your own apps!

Spice it up!
If you're sick and tired of your "blah" dialog boxes and want to set your program apart from the crowd, we have something for you. No more boring boxes with black X's in them, or little round dots for radio buttons. Want something more interesting for that rectangular OK button? How about a sculpted rounded button that looks like something from a decent stereo? Or a bitmap dialog background? Or for the more exciting app that you're putting together, how about a really sexy interface! Without depending on Windows XP to deliver it!

What it does
What Visual Face Lift does is dynamically change the look all the UI elements on the dialog, giving them the ability to load graphic bitmaps to be used by them - all done on the fly. You do not need to change your resources, and you do not need to give up your MFC, ATL, C#, or VB code. Just link a lib or dynamically load a DLL, and call a single function to add dynamic skinning to your application. Works with both Visual Studio 6.0 and .NET 2002/2003 projects.

A small sample of what it does:

• For CHECKBOXES, Visual Face Lift uses a bitmap to give the checkbox a real check, not a plain X. Like this: Use the supplied Skin Editor and edit or create your own. Transparent bitmaps are supported. You can use whatever size you want, big or small.
• For RADIO BUTTONS, Visual Face Lift uses another bitmap, which is similar to the checkbox bitmap (or not, your choice!). For example:. Again, transparent bitmaps are supported. Same as checkboxes, make them whatever size.
• For PUSHBUTTONS (like OK or Cancel), Visual Face Lift also uses a transparent bitmap, but stretches the image to fit the dimensions of the graphic. By manipulating the control values in the Skin config, you can determine where the stretching is done. By fine-tuning this, you can get the image to look quite striking. The screenshots shows this 9-way stretch being used for the pushbuttons, the titlebar, and the progress bar, and the window frame.
• For PROGRESS BARS, Visual Face Lift lets you use a pair of bitmaps to define the background and foreground of the bar, so you can have a smooth beveled edge if you want.
• Almost all TEXT in the dialog can be changed to use different colors depending on the state. This applies to buttons, static labels, and titlebar text.
• The DIALOG FRAME can be changed to whatever bitmaps you want.
• The RESIZING FRAME - for MDI windows - can also be changed to whatever bitmaps you want.
• TRACKBARS can have a custom "channel" and control "thumb" bitmap, plus all kinds of variations on it. 

And of course lots more - download it and see for yourself!

Contact
Email for suggestions and etc.

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