Microsoft® Visual Basic® .NET 2003 Kick Start

Drawing Your Own Interface

If you need to create an interface that is different from any of the controls you currently have access to, you can always turn to drawing your own interface. When developing business applications, the standard set of controls are usually sufficient. Sometimes though, doing your own graphics is the only way to get the results you want. Consider the following control; I wanted to draw a series of messages into a window (tip-of-the-day type of information) and have each new message slowly fade-in over the top of the previous one. I could have implemented this using a label that I slowly changed the ForeColor on, but I plan on adding images and other aspects to the message in the future, so drawing my own control gives ...