Appearance Customization
- 2 minutes to read
The ExpressBars Suite allows you to customize the appearance of a toolbar/menu system’s elements in different ways.
Look and Feel
The ExpressBars Suite fully supports our shared painting library, and provides the same look and feel options as other controls. In addition, this makes it possible for you to have centralized control over the look and feel of all controls in your application.
To change the bars’ paint style, use the bar manager’s LookAndFeel.Kind, LookAndFeel.NativeStyle, and LookAndFeel.SkinName properties. Note that these properties are in effect only when a bar manager’s Style property is set to bmsUseLookAndFeel.
Built-in Skins
This feature only applies to the Ribbon UI. A skinned interface not only changes the color and visual styles of application elements, but also changes their shapes (see Ribbon Form).
ExpressBars provides several built-in styles for the Ribbon. To choose one, use the Ribbon’s ColorSchemeName property.
ExpressSkins
In addition to built-in skins, you can apply skins provided by the ExpressSkins Library (must be installed separately). This library provides more than thirty skins both for the traditional toolbars/menus and Ribbon UI.
Customization levels
You can change the appearance of elements at different levels:
The application-level appearance is modified via a bar manager’s options.
The appearance of a specific toolbar and its elements is customized by using a toolbar’s options.
Customization of an individual item is made via the item’s settings.
Appearance settings
The following tables contain a complete list of appearance options.
| Member | Description |
|---|---|
| Backgrounds | Specifies background bitmaps for toolbars and submenus. |
| Font | Specifies font settings for toolbar/menu system entries. |
| ImageOptions | Holds bar item image options. |
| LookAndFeel | Specifies toolbar paint style. |
| Style | Specifies toolbar paint style. |
| SunkenBorder | Specifies a dock control sunken border’s visibility. |
| Member | Description |
|---|---|
| AlphaBlendValue | Specifies a floating toolbar’s transparency. |
| BorderStyle | Specifies a toolbar’s border style. |
| BackgroundBitmap | Specifies a toolbar’s background image. |
| Color | Specifies a toolbar’s background color. |
| Font | Specifies font settings for toolbar’s items. |
| UseOwnFont | Specifies whether the toolbar’s font settings or the bar manager’s font settings are applied to bar items. |
| Member | Description |
|---|---|
| ItemOptions | Holds appearance settings for a menu item. |