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I'm doing this application in C# using the free Krypton Toolkit but the Krypton Navigator is a paid product which is rather expensive for me and this application is being developed on my free time and it will be available to the public for free.

So, I'm looking for a free control to integrate better into my Krypton application because the default one doesn't quite fit and it will be different depending on the OS version...

Any suggestions?

P.S: I know I could owner-draw it but I'm trying not to have that kind of work... I prefer something already done if it exists for free.

EDIT: I just found exactly what I wanted:
http://www.angelonline.net/CodeSamples/Lib_3.5.0.zip

rfgamaral
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6 Answers6

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If you need an updated lib with Office 2010 Palettes: http://www.angelonline.net/CodeSamples/Lib_4.2.0.zip

Mario
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My first suggestion would be to talk to Phil at ComponentFactory. I find him to be a very reasonable fellow. Maybe he can give you a special deal or make a design suggestion on how to customize the existing tab control.

But your's is more of a design/subjective question that, I think, would benefit from a screenshot to better communicate the design challenge you need to "integrate better". Saying "the default one doesn't quite fit" is pretty vague.

After that, people will have a better starting point for making suggestions. In the mean time, I would look at the WindowsClient.NET control gallery.

flipdoubt
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    What I mean by "doesn't fit" is that it doesn't fit the look of Krypton based apps. No matter if you are running XP or Vista, it just doesn't look right. – rfgamaral Apr 03 '09 at 15:04
  • I figured as much, but how do you want it to look as compared to how it looks now? I'm not suggesting anything revolutionary, just that a picture is worth a thousand words. Something like "This is what it looks like now. I want it to look less gray." – flipdoubt Apr 03 '09 at 20:19
  • Is Application.EnableVisualStyles() set in Main? – flipdoubt Apr 03 '09 at 20:20
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I don't know of any open source or free tab controls, but I wonder why you don't just use the framework's tab control. Is there something you are trying to do that the Forms.TabControl doesn't do?

Gary.Ray
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  • +1 for this answer - and yes, the Windows.Forms tab control will look different under different version of Windows. This is a good thing - Windows look and feel. Applications that try to craft their own quirky design style can look very out of place very easily. – Richard Ev Apr 03 '09 at 12:00
  • Sometimes it's a good thing. And sometimes the default gray-brown-blue-pastel look and feel of Windows in its various incarnations is a bad thing. The decision as to whether an app should follow or deviate from OS UI guidelines/conventions is different for each app, and shouldn't be made as a snap decision. –  May 10 '10 at 05:04
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If anyone is looking for the latest version of the AC.ExtendedRenderer.ToolKit which is mentioned in other posts, then the following links point to the central source of them. However the website is dead....even WaybackMachine can't help us get to the DLLs :(!

The latest I have been able to find is 4.1.6b here:

If anyone knows where the later versions can be downloaded, please let us know.

EDIT: The Component Factory Krypton components were migrated to https://github.com/ComponentFactory/Krypton

Dan Smith
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Colin Smith
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  1. Download the Flat Tab Control (.NET) from Code Project. Takes about 30 seconds to get this working, and it gets you away from the default Windows tab control look and feel. But it's not Kryptonized.
  2. See this post on a slick custom Kryptonized Tab Control based on the Flat Tab control you built in Step 1. You can download the control assembly on this downloads page (it's a little hard to find). So far as I know, the source code isn't available, however, Reflector can be of use here if you're curious as to how the Krypton-theming was done.
  3. Replace the Flat Tab display logic (Paint, etc.) with Krypton-aware display logic. This is straightforward, because there's not a lot of code to the Flat Tab control.
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You could look at the Magic TabControl project over at CodeProject.

Rune Grimstad
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    That CodeProject article says nothing about how to implement a tab control. It's a little bit of code sitting around a binary MagicLibrary.DLL for which no source is provided and which I believe is a commercial library. –  May 10 '10 at 04:58
  • Haven't tried it but the description says: " The source code for the actual control is inside the separate second download" – marsh-wiggle Jun 16 '20 at 17:59
  • Haha. This comment is 11 years old. I suggest you open a new question :-) – Rune Grimstad Jun 17 '20 at 12:28