Use the contained link to download the beta version of the next release of Krypton, including the custom chrome and Office 2007 look and feel.
Let me know if you find any bugs, crashes or other observations that will help improve the stability and quality of the release.
I’ve finished the task of getting the Office 2007 color schemes looking correct for a custom chrome window. It also allows a great deal of customization which I hope will be useful to people.
Here is the Office 2007 Blue color scheme with the mouse hovering over one of the form level buttons.
Notice that the form has detected the use of a StatusStrip at the bottom of the client area and has merged it into the border areas. This gives a close approximation to Office 2007.
The caption area of the form is actually drawn using a Krypton header element. If you are familiar with the existing KryptonHeader control you will know it can draw three values, an image, text and extra text. For our form the image becomes the icon in the caption area, the text is the main caption text and extra text allows some more text to be shown.
By setting the form level ExtraText property you can get another string into the caption. Here is the Silver scheme showing this.
Also like the KryptonHeader you can define ButtonSpec instances so that extra buttons are added to the caption area. Here I have used the form level ButtonSpecs collection to add a red certificate.
The form exposes StateCommon, StateActive and StateInactive properties that allow you to customize the border, background and header parts of the custom chrome.
Here I have changed the color of the text and extra text strings, altered the font for the extra text and indicated the extra certification button should be placed on the near edge.
If you want to completely change the appearance then you can do that. Here is a rather ugly green look I created in a few seconds.
I did not bother altering all the colors for the menu, tool and status strips but you can do that as well using a KryptonPalette, so that the entire application is consistent.
Next up is to start testing and investigating it under different operating systems. I need check W2K, Server 2003 and Vista (with Aero and in Basic mode).
Most the custom chrome is drawing now. I just have to set the correct drawing of the form buttons and then tidy up the status bar area.
The caption and borders and working fine and it even draws correctly when you choose all of the different possible FormBorderStyle options. It also honors the various other form properties such as ControlBox, MinimizeBox and Icon.
I need to finalize the drawing of form close, min and max buttons so they appear in the same style as the Office 2007 applications. Then I want to try and improve the appearance of the StatusStrip.
It would be nice to get it to merge into the border area for a more pleasing appearance. Hopefully this will be all finished off next week so I can complete the coding phase and starting updating documentation.
Just 7 days after releasing the first version of the Kryton library we have reached just over 700 downloads of the library. Averaging 100 per day from a standing start is more than I expected.
I expect that run rate to start tailing down as the news group announcements fade from view. Plus all those that want a free copy of DotNetMagic will soon be saturated as well.
More permanent exposure has been achieved by adding the library into the control library section at the www.windowsforms.net website. In addition it has been placed in the sandbox area of the channel9.msdn.com website and an entry added to www.gotdotnet.com.
Now, if only I could get scoble to mention it…..I wonder…..
I’ve had several emails from bloggers asking why Crownwood have teamed up with us to give away $399 of software for a mere mention on a .NET development blog. What’s in it for them?
Actually this is a very simple piece of marketing what would usually be called product placement. So how does it work?
The vast majority of sales for component software are made to companies and not individual developers. There maybe the odd sale to a lone hobbyist from time to time but basically it is businesses that buy component libraries and especially the multi-developer licences that generate the big bucks.
The vast majority of blogs about .NET are written by individual developers. How many of those bloggers would have bought a copy had they not been given one? The answer will be close to zero because either they would never have paid for the software at all or they would have already bought it anyway (or the company they work for would have bought it).
So the actual lost revenue to Crownwood is virtually, and might actually be, zero. Remember that the cost of giving away a $399 copy of software to someone that would never have paid for it anyway is actually $0. There is no CD to burn or postage to pay. The cost of letting someone download an installation file is essentially zero.
So in return for almost zero cost they get their company and product name in front of hundreds and probably thousands of .NET developers. And if they get really lucky maybe someone like Scoble will put a mention on his blog and suddenly they have 10 times the normal traffic to check out their website. How much would you normally pay for that kind of marketing?
It’s just simple product placement. If your a Radio DJ you get heaps of free stuff sent to you. Why? Because the company in question is just hoping you mention their product once on a popular radion station. I think more of this will happen in the future for popular bloggers.
