Working on HMI in C#/.NET is fun, but it is a large task to get dark themes right. Below is a list of components that I want to complete:
| clEditCtrl | Simple text edit control. |
| clHScrollBar | Horizontal Scroll Bar. |
| clObjectEditor | Advanced grid alike editor to edit an “object” with a tree of items. |
| clPopUpMenu | Classic pop-up menu. |
| clShapeLabel | Label with titled corner options. |
| clSmallButton | Small, flat button with image symbols. |
| clTabBottonCtrl | Advanced button with sub-buttons. |
| clTabStrip | A list of buttons located on an edge. |
| clVScrollBar | Vertical Scroll Bar. |
| clMenu | Classic Horizontal Menu |
| clCaption | Dialog title caption |
| clToolBar | Horizontal bar for various sub tools |
Other components will be added as needed, but I want to complete the list above so I can move on with other things for now. I decided to not do a drop in replacement of all components, many of the components above also add advanced functionality to be able to quickly create an advanced HMI.
I have tried various schemes, but I ended up sub-classing from UserControl and re-create things from scratch on most components. Luckily I could use the edit control with a few tricks, because that alone is a lot of work. To make this work I had to add color properties as follows on all components.
| BackColor | Most components have this |
| ForeColor | Most have this as well. |
| BorderStyle | Need to override BorderStyle |
| BorderColor | Very few components could control border color from the application. |
| BackColorHover | Background color if mouse hover over the component. |
| BackColorShape | Used only on shape controls where I need to “normal” background colors. |
| BackColorSelected | Used on controls like push-buttons to signal state. |
I started doing this on Qt as well earlier, but I concluded that C# was so much easier to work with and as performance issues I had earlier are gone I moved back to C#/.NET. I might go back and re-visit Qt at some point.