Totally customized window using bitmap images

[3Dpdk]

I am in no way an experienced programmer and I'm just beginning to convert from cBasic to eBasic so many of my cBasic habits have carried over into eBasic that may not be at all necessary.

I have always paid a lot of attention to the "eye candy" of a program and the layout of a window; make sure text doesn't overextend it's boundaries, buttons don't overlap, graphics appear and disappear when they are supposed to, etc.

The ultimate to all this eye-candy would be to create a completely, graphically customized window. The problem with bitmap buttons is that Windows still imposes some of it's own graphics like boarders and such and isn't always satisfactory.

There may be other ways to get around this but here is one way to create a totally customized window.



WinZip file for this program example. Do not run this directly from the WinZip window. Without the proper path to the images it will open an invisible window that will be difficult to close.

This is a "tool" program that does a specific job for a specific group of people and my intention is not to show how the tool works, but rather to show how I achieved the graphic effects in the user interface.

I've attached a zip file that contains the commented code, image files and a couple of test files the program works with so you can see how the effects work.

The bonus is the zip file contains a simple X format model of a mobile home (without textures) if you work in 3D.
(If you can't tell, my style is currently affected by my recent work in writing custom XML gauges for MS Flight Simulator)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now I have a question:
I did this same sort of thing several years ago in iBasic, but my background image had transparent areas that allowed the desktop to show through. This let me use rounded corners for my main image without having the window background filling the gap.

I no longer have the code and the only thing I remember is that RGB(192,192,192) (gray) is concidered by Windows to be transparent.

I only used this once and only after much help from Paul.

What the heck did I do to create this effect???
thanks for any help.
3DPDK