Howto change appearance and/or behavior of window caption and borders
Is it a possibility to change appearance and/or behavior of window caption and borders (non-client area) using features and APIs of WPF (something like templates etc).
Documentation and internet searches gave me noting about this.
It will be wierd if developers will still have to deal with WM_NCPAINT, WM_NCCALCSIZE and all that stuff.
[417 byte] By [
EugeneZ] at [2007-12-24]
As far as I am aware of, it is not possible to change to the behavior of the caption and borders, but you can create your own. Just set the AllowTransparency to true, WindowStyle to none and Background to transparent. The SDK includes the sample called NonRectangularWindowSample that shows how to do that.
Thank you. I know the method you mentioned very well. I developed the components for caption and border skinning to be used in Windows Forms applications. So I know how much of crappy WinAPI work developer needs to do to achieve professional-grade results.
So now I know that WPF is not a WinAPI-excluding solution. Can't imagine why the guys from WPF team didn't implemented non-client extensibility mechanisms. I've done it for windows forms, so what stopped them to do that for WPF? Frustrated..
Ok, you can create your own "non-client" elements, but as I know, there are problems with appearance and feedback. For example, mouse window resizing implemented manually (especially at top-left corner) causes hard flickering. Also there are some issues with window dragging using mouse and GDI+ DCs etc. That is why all serious 3rd party component libraries for Windows Forms are redrawing non-client elements by processing WM_NCXXX messages, not by turning non-client area off. So I wonder why WPF doesnt process these messages by itself and gives application developers XAML-based APIs for extending non-client area.
Nevertheless, I haven't foundNonRectangularWindowSample in my SDK folders and in Internet. I am using June 2006 SDK, maybe it doesnt contains the sample so I would be glad if you send it to e.zolotko<at_no_spam>gmail.com
I have found several solutions in blogs, but they are using WinAPI and a bit naive 
Thank you and sorry for some
inconsistency in my questions.
