Thread: Skinning with VB6

Originally Posted by Confused

For switching the skin on buttons it's best to position PictureBoxes on the form where you want the buttons to be, and blit into those. Make sure also that AutoRefresh and AutoRedraw are set to false (but remember when you're done to issue the "PictureBox.Refresh" command.

So what you are saying is set the form background to the off-state and then use a picturebox to blit in the down-state image ?

the way to do the skinning with two at least images is very simple

just open a project in VB 6.0, create a form with 12000x7200 width x height

insert an image control (image1) in it with the same size, stretch is on
give the same size as form to image1

insert 2 pictureclip objects (must be enabled from components list), they will be like an array of objects pictureclip1(0), pictureclip1(1). create the first and copy-paste the other answering yes to the array.

load in each one the frodo player background (e.g audio player, backgrounddown.jpg, backgroundup.jpg) when is on and off conditions. 0=on 1=off

insert an image2 image with strectch on and place it on a play button or what ever you want

insert the following code in the form

and you have a nice skinable app without blink, blip, beep and things like these.. Very easy and straight. no problems with flickering and flashing when it is on a control

simple skin code -----------
-------


Dim buttonon As Boolean

Private Sub Form_KeyUp(KeyCode As Integer, Shift As Integer)
If KeyCode = vbKeyEscape Then
Unload Me
End If
End Sub

Private Sub Form_Load()
buttonon = False
PictureClip1(1).ClipX = Image1.Left \ 15
PictureClip1(1).ClipY = Image1.Top \ 15
PictureClip1(1).ClipHeight = Image1.Height \ 15
PictureClip1(1).ClipWidth = Image1.Width \ 15
Image1.Picture = PictureClip1(1).Clip

End Sub

Private Sub Image2_Click()
buttonon = Not buttonon
If buttonon Then
PictureClip1(0).ClipX = Image2.Left / 15
PictureClip1(0).ClipY = Image2.Top / 15
PictureClip1(0).ClipHeight = Image2.Height / 15
PictureClip1(0).ClipWidth = Image2.Width / 15
Image2.Picture = PictureClip1(0).Clip
Else
PictureClip1(1).ClipX = Image2.Left / 15
PictureClip1(1).ClipY = Image2.Top / 15
PictureClip1(1).ClipHeight = Image2.Height / 15
PictureClip1(1).ClipWidth = Image2.Width / 15
Image2.Picture = PictureClip1(1).Clip
End If
End Sub


Chears
Michael

Ive tred to do ask you ask and it doesn't work right. When i run the form the Off image width isnt wide enough throwing every off. The iamge swap work s nicley but the iamge is too short for the form.

Any idea as to why ?

Sorry my bad i had the wrong ratio setup. It was on user not twips.
Thankyou for the example it works well.

Ive tried to figure out the picturebox way and have no luck. If there is an example you can give that woudl help out alot. If it is a better way to skin then i wodl iek to do it that way. I am very new to VB6 and trying to learn..

Thanks for your help.........

S|X

I think the best and easy way to work is this one. And you can add more pictureclip1 layers so, you can have more states (empty, off, down, over, on, ...). just select the proper pictureclip1 and you will have a different state.

I wish you and all of you

Marry X'mas & Happy New Year

Michael

Does anyone know if the aformentioned process is similar for VB.NET? I've made a couple of applications and I was thinking of making them skinnable - but I wasn't sure where I should start.

Further to this - how to I do a mouseover on an image control taking the dimensions of the image control into account??