How do I duplicate iTunes-style windows on Windows?

Question

Can anyone provide some insight on how to "duplicate" an iTunes style window in Windows? Specifically I am looking for the following features:

1) rounded window 2) top and bottom toolbars 3) rounded text fields

I'm currently attempting a bit of cross-platform development with Real Studio and while I've discovered the mechanism by which to perform the rounded windows in OS X (declare method call to HIWindowSetContentBorderThickness or SetContentBorderThickness), I cannot find in the MSDN how to do similar things in Windows. Obviously Apple accomplished it in actually writing iTunes for Windows. Perhaps they wrote custom controls from the ground up.

SIDENOTE: I found this article from a few years back that briefly discusses it (http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?joel.3.454369.12), but this is pretty much all I could find.

Even if I can't duplicate it exactly, some direction on which Windows libraries might contain the functionality I need to do it "manually" would be nice. Any further assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

there is a third party controls that do what you want. It works on Mac & Windows.

http://www.madebyfiga.com/fgsourcelist/

works well.

sb

Answer 2

There's no API for doing Apple-style rounded corners, but there are lower-level APIs for creating windows (both frame windows and controls) of any shape you want.

I don't use RealStudio, but I believe it allows you to access both .NET and native Win32 APIs, so:

If you're using .NET Windows.Forms, read Shaped Windows Forms and Controls in Visual Studio .NET. It's written for VB7, but should be easy to translate to your favorite language.

If you're using the raw Win32 API, there are at least two ways to do this. The simplest, but most limited, is to call the SetWindowRgn API, which sets the shape of your window to anything you can create as an HRGN. But that probably won't cut it for you. You don't want jagged edges; you want smooth curves, with alpha-blended borders, and maybe shadows. (At least that's what Apple does.) The Layered Windows API is the way to do this. It allows arbitrary shapes (even changing on the fly, if you use UpdateLayeredWindow—although you don't need that feature to emulate iTunes), alpha transparency, and complicated hit testing. Since the original article is very out of date, and doesn't cover all of the functionality, also see Layered Windows for the current documentation, which has links to the references.