Appearance Customization

Jun 07, 2024
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.

Bar Manager

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.

Toolbar

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.

Toolbar item

Member	Description
ItemOptions	Holds appearance settings for a menu item.