From the very beginning here at Developer Express, pixel-perfect design has been one of our main objectives. If your application used our UI components, you didn't have to worry about the visual elements which comprised your application. All the little things that previously haunted Delphi and C++Builder developers such as proper offsets, fonts, alignments, and borders were always properly configured and drawn so that you as the developer never had to write a single line of code to deliver applications that looked as professional as those released by Microsoft®.
Every control that we've released since ExpressGrid v1 in 1998, has had multiple integrated paint styles that emulated Microsoft® Office® versions 97 through 2003. When Windows® XP was released, we implemented native painting support across all of our VCL components as well.
But in our industry, nothing stands still, and with the release of Microsoft Office 2007, it became obvious that we could no longer rely on simple painting routines. It was impossible to emulate the Office 2007 style by painting pixels, lines and frames. There had to be a higher-level abstraction that would allow us to paint custom-shaped elements with complex backgrou