The Rendering Framework

Introduction

Some NetXP controls allow you to customize their appearance through the use of renderers. Most of these controls offer three renderers: Windows Default, Office XP, and Office 2003. The Office XP and Office 2003 renderers also provide a ColorTable property, which allows you to change the colors used by the renderer. For more information, see Color Tables. Below you can view some screenshots of the look and feel produced by each renderer.

Office 2003 Style:

Office XP Style:

Windows Default Style:

Usage

Assigning Renderers

Renderers can be assigned to NetXP controls using the control's Renderer property. By default, all controls use the Office 2003 look. The command bar manager also has a Renderer property which propagates to all the command bars assigned to the command bar manager. Below is an example of how you would change the renderer to Office XP, on the form shown in the screenshots above.

Implementing Custom Renderers

Several interfaces are provided to aid in the development of custom renderers. These are defined as I<Control Name>Renderer. In order to have a custom renderer, the class that you create must implement one of these interfaces. Please refer to the NetXP reference documentation for details on the renderer interfaces.