Disabling the VCL Styles in the non client area of a Form

February 7, 2012 by Rodrigo 12 Comments

Today I receive a question about how disable the vcl styles in the non client area of a vcl form. Well that can be done using a Style hook.

Tipically a VCL form with a vcl style look like this

To remove the vcl style in the non client are we need create a style hook which descend of the TMouseTrackControlStyleHook and then override the PaintBackground and Create methods.

Check this sample code

  TFormStyleHookNC= class(TMouseTrackControlStyleHook)
  protected
    procedure PaintBackground(Canvas: TCanvas); override;
    constructor Create(AControl: TWinControl); override;
  end;

constructor TFormStyleHookNC.Create(AControl: TWinControl);
begin
  inherited;
  OverrideEraseBkgnd := True;
end;

procedure TFormStyleHookNC.PaintBackground(Canvas: TCanvas);
var
  Details: TThemedElementDetails;
  R: TRect;
begin
  if StyleServices.Available then
  begin
    Details.Element := teWindow;
    Details.Part := 0;
    R := Rect(0, 0, Control.ClientWidth, Control.ClientHeight);
    StyleServices.DrawElement(Canvas.Handle, Details, R);
  end;
end;

And apply in this way

TStyleManager.Engine.RegisterStyleHook(TForm1, TFormStyleHookNC);

After of that this is the result