Member Avatar for mickeyfitzray

Hi,
Im currently designing a media player for my 4th year project in college using C# and Visual Studio 2003. However I wish to design my own unique good quality interface and I am unsure of what way to go about it. Does anyone know if there is any tools out there I can use to design my own interface and be able to code it in Visual Studio with C#,
Thanks!

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by plazmo

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asked about building a distinctive media-player UI in VS2003/C#. pointed toward custom controls and suggested a borderless form with a transparency key. Both approaches are valid; the choice comes down to how polished and interactive the UI must be versus how much low-level work is acceptable.

Design workflow and practical techniques: create full-size mockups in an image editor and export separate images for each control state (normal/hover/pressed/disabled). Implement controls by inheriting from Control and drawing in OnPaint with GDI+ (set SmoothingMode/text hints for quality). Enable double buffering and avoid flicker with SetStyle(...) so animations (seekbar, VU meters) look smooth.

protected override void OnCreateControl()
{
    SetStyle(ControlStyles.UserPaint | ControlStyles.AllPaintingInWmPaint | ControlStyles.DoubleBuffer, true);
    UpdateStyles();
    base.OnCreateControl();
}

Shaping, hit-testing and alpha: for a non-rectangular window use a GraphicsPath and assign Form.Region so mouse clicks match visible pixels:

var gp = new System.Drawing.Drawing2D.GraphicsPath();
gp.AddEllipse(0, 0, Width, Height);
Region = new Region(gp);

TransparencyKey (simple) is quick but produces hard edges and z-order/click-through quirks. For smooth, anti-aliased semi-transparency use layered windows (Win32 UpdateLayeredWindow / SetLayeredWindowAttributes) via P/Invoke; it’s more work but yields per-pixel alpha. See Microsoft docs for layered windows: UpdateLayeredWindow.

Cautions: Dispose bitmaps, minimize per-frame allocations, test on the target Windows version, and be mindful of GDI+ performance when animating many controls. If the environment allows newer tech, WPF simplifies vector skins and alpha blending and is worth considering for future projects.

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Member Avatar for tayspen

So i take it you want to make custom controls/ In other words you want it to be better looking then the built in designer that comes with VS 2003? If so you will most likley end up coding it all by hand. Here are some links to custom controls.

http://www.codeproject.com/cs/miscctrl/aquabutton.asp

More Info:

Good luck :)

-T

Member Avatar for plazmo

another cool interface trick, i dunno if those cover them but create a transparancy key and set the frame to no borders.
then create an image with the color of the transparancy key around the edges and set it as the forms background

that will let you change the shape of the form to however you like

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