Control Templates
In the past, Windows developers were forced to choose between convenience and flexibility. For maximum convenience, they could use prebuilt controls. These controls worked well enough, but they offered limited customization and almost always had a fixed visual appearance. Occasionally, some controls provided a less than intuitive "owner drawing" mode that allowed developers to paint a portion of the control by responding to a callback. But the basic controls—buttons, text boxes, check boxes, list boxes, and so on—were completely locked down.
As a result, developers who wanted a bit more pizzazz were forced to build custom controls from scratch. This was a problem—not only was it slow and difficult to write the required drawing ...
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