Custom controls

[TNick]

Hello!

I am currently working at dll to replace some standard and common controls. I hope it will be smaller and faster. I was wondering about your opinion about splitting this dll in multiple dll files, because it tend to grow in size.... or -maybe- would be better to build this project as libs?

BTW, if you feel that something is missing for a specific control, please let me know!

Nick

[ramguru]

Well, I think that SysTabControl32 is just piece of crap: does nothing, and makes so much trouble... Some of standard controls might not look superb, but they support unicode... My suggestion regarding split would be: if those controls are relatively small (one control doesn't occupy whole window), then that group should be kept in one dll, & if you've implemented something more sophisticated then that control should be separated from others. Personally I don't like bunch of dll files in one directory, if it's possible I link everything into exe (static lib)

[TNick]

Thanks for your reply, ramguru ! I will add a tab control, and further suggestions on that matter will be highly appreciated!

Nick

[u]

I'd put them in .libs, too. And would use something like sDraw or better, instead of simple GDI, to get better-looking graphics :)

[TNick]

Hi, thanks for reply!

Libs seem to be popular... let's see what size will have the final version...

BTW, the controls that I think of 'till now are:
- single line edit control  \
- multi line edit control   /   or maybe just one with flags
- simple list and combo boxes
- button
- label (static control) ???????????
- treeview control (almost ready)
- image container (almost ready)
- image list
- tab control (ramguru's suggestion)
- <some other suggestions>

Anyway, Ultrano, I think (and know by following some DirectX tutorials) that there is a serious speed decrease by using this kind of stuff. Am I wrong? I didn't try OpenGL and I didn't know about sDraw, but I'm willing to try if you think is worthing for this project.
As I said, the purpose is to create faster and smaller controls, with similar (or increased) functionality.

Nick


[later]
found and downloaded sDraw :)

[u]

sDraw draws purely in software. The only tricky thing is its back-buffer... the decision on how big to make it.

I've been using DirectDraw and Direct3D9 a lot for custom-drawing of whole windows - it's been a boost of performance.  But I've never tried using it in custom-controls to test how 100 instances of such custom-controls perform on drawing.