Implement a capability to skin third-party components.

Andreas Hess

created 10 years ago

[DevExpress Support Team: CLONED FROM K18488: Is it possible to apply DevExpress skins to standard or 3rd party components?]
For our old VB6 components, we used the Codejock skinning framework, which was also able to skin 3rd party controls (even our old cobol dialogs). Why isn't this possible with devexpress?
Our application is be a mix of DevExpress.Net components and old Vb6 and cobol dialogues. It would be great, if they looked alike.

Answers approved by DevExpress Support

Nadezhda (DevExpress Support)

created 10 years ago

Hello Andreas,

The .Net framework does not provide an easy way to skin third-party components. To skin our controls, we implement our own logic of changes in appearance, which takes a lot of code.
Universal skinning cannot be implemented using our controls because it requires changing the standard .Net framework logic. Therefore, our controls do not support this functionality.
Feel free to contact us if you experience difficulties using our components. We will be happy to help you.

Show previous comments (3)

Andreas Hess 10 years ago

Thanks for your answer. We are not looking for a way to skin .Net components.
Codejock is hooking into the window message queue and changing all standard windows componets (Buttons, Textboxes and so on).
I'll attach a sample to show what it does to a standard Cobol dialogue, that didnt have to be changed in any way for this to work.

Skinning.pdf

DevExpress Support Team 10 years ago

Hi Andreas,

Am I correct that the Codejock framework applies skins to standard controls, but does not apply them to ours? To be honest, we are not familiar with how this framework works and how it applies skins. In our controls, we take our skin images, colors, etc. and draw them. Our logic is similar to drawing an image on the Paint event of a control. I don't think that any framework may change this without creating descendants of our controls. I suggest you contact the Codejock framework team to clarify how this framework works and it may work with our architecture correctly.

Andreas Hess 10 years ago

No, it doesn't change any DevExpress controls because they are not standard windows controls. I've only seen it work on Vb6 and Cobol dialogues.

DevExpress Support Team 10 years ago

I don't think that the Codejock framework will work with our controls. But, I suggest you contact their team to clarify how this framework works.

Andreas Hess 10 years ago

We don't want Codejock to skin our DevExpress components. We want the DevExpress skin to be applied to our old dialogues, to make them look alike. If the user has a blue DevExpress skin, the cobol dialogues should be blue too.

DevExpress Support Team 10 years ago

Hi Andreas,

If it's possible to create custom controls in that dialog and override their painting mechanism to use our colors and images, you can do this. See the articles mentioned in the Is it possible to apply DevExpress skins to standard or 3rd party components? KB article for details on how to get our skin elements.

Implement a capability to skin third-party components.

Answers approved by DevExpress Support

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