Overview
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Application Themes/Skins for WinForms
Microsoft Office® 2007 Skins, Windows® 7 Themes and over 20 Unique Look and Feel Styles.
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Today, more than ever, consumers demand the very best from software developers – from feature rich applications that address their business needs, to visually appealing and easy to understand interfaces that increase their productivity and efficiency. DevExpress understands these pressures on you and your team and develops its tools so you can deliver your very best, every day. Over the years, when it comes to both custom solutions and shrink-wrapped business applications, the UI introduced by the Microsoft Office team has dominated the look and feel landscape in our industry. Our commitment to you will always be to deliver visual components for the Windows® platform that fully emulate all UI innovations being generated by Microsoft. This gives you the ability to leverage the dominance of Microsoft Office and thus reduce your application's learning curve. But of course, the Microsoft Office UI is not the be all and end all of the software world. Consumer and business requirements often dictate that developers deviate from the standard and deliver a UI that specifically meets the necessities of a business or marketplace. It is for these very reasons that DevExpress created its .NET Skinning Engine...so that you can unleash your creativity and accomplish more with visual controls than you could ever imagine. In 2007, we demonstrated the power of a well-designed skinning engine that goes above and beyond the standard UI elements offered by Microsoft Office. With the release of our Holiday Themed Skin, we gave software developers the option to provide a fun and interesting new way to approach UI design – one that celebrates unique dates/events on our annual calendar. 
Whether you prefer the standard look and feel offered by Microsoft Office or wish to introduce unique elements within your application, the DevExpress Windows Forms skinning engine will empower you with options. It will ensure that your applications never remain stagnant and are always fresh and exciting – with little or no effort on your part. The following is a list of skins that we ship with all of our .NET WinForms components.
Microsoft® Office® Style Skins
Windows® 7 Style Skins
Visual Studio® Style Skins
Unique Skins Designed by DevExpress
As you can see, these are not just styles or color schemes. We actually use bitmap-based skinning for our controls. And perhaps more importantly, we allow you to design your own look and feel options or modify built-in styles as needed. This can achieved via our easy-to-use Skin Editor application...included free of charge.
To see how easy it is for you to create a custom skin and introduce the capabilities and appearance required by your end-users, please review the following Tutorial.
The following is a brief list of features available to you when you begin using DevExpress Windows Forms component technologies:
- It is FREE - Our Skinning Engine is included free of charge with any .NET WinForms Product you purchase from Developer Express.
- Microsoft® Office® 2007 Skins - All three color schemes - Blue, Black and Silver - are fully supported. In addition to these basic skin types, you have access to slightly modified variants. Since similar elements can be painted differently from one Office application to another, we chose to provide two skins for each color scheme. As such, you can choose the paint style you like the most or allow your end-users to determine what works for them.
- 18 Custom Skins - In addition to Microsoft Office 2007 skins, you get multiple unique look and feel options that were designed by Developer Express.
- Centralized Control - The DefaultLookAndFeelController component allows you to specify the paint style of all components on a form at once.
- Form Skinning Support - You can use our specially designed form class so that your entire form delivers a consistent look and feel.
- Skin Editor Application - Enables you to edit built-in skins, as well as construct custom look and feel options.
- Skin Maintenance - With the release of new controls or with the introduction of new elements in existing controls, we will update all shipping skins accordingly.
The following Developer Express components fully support our Windows Forms skinning library:
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