| Type | Description | ||
| ID as Long | A Long expression that indicates the index of the skin being added or replaced. The value must be between 1 and 126, so Appearance collection should holds no more than 126 elements. | |||
| Skin as Variant | A string expression that indicates the path to the skin file ( *.ebn ), or a string expression that indicates the BASE64 encoded string that holds a skin file ( *.ebn ). Use the Exontrol's exImages tool to build BASE 64 encoded strings on the skin file (*.ebn) you have created. Loading the skin from a file ( eventually uncompressed file ) is always faster then loading from a BASE64 encoded string. The Exontrol's exButton component installs a skin builder that can be used to create new skins. |
| Return | Description | ||
| Boolean | A Boolean expression that indicates whether the new skin was added or replaced. |
The identifier you choose for the skin is very important to be used in the background properties like explained bellow. Shortly, the color properties uses 4 bytes ( DWORD, double WORD, and so on ) to hold a RGB value. More than that, the first byte ( most significant byte in the color ) is used only to specify system color. if the first bit in the byte is 1, the rest of bits indicates the index of the system color being used. So, we use the last 7 bits in the high significant byte of the color to indicates the identifier of the skin being used. So, since the 7 bits can cover 127 values, excluding 0, we have 126 possibilities to store an identifier in that byte. This way, a DWORD expression indicates the background color stored in RRGGBB format and the index of the skin ( ID parameter ) in the last 7 bits in the high significant byte of the color. For instance, the BackColor = BackColor Or &H2000000 indicates that we apply the skin with the index 2 using the old color, to the object that BackColor is applied.
The skin method may change the visual appearance for the following parts in the control:
For instance, the following VB sample changes the visual appearance for the
selected date. The SelBackColor
property indicates the selection background color. Shortly, we need to add a
skin to the Appearance object using the Add method, and we need to set the
last 7 bits in the SelBackColor property to indicates the index of the skin
that we want to use. The sample applies the "
"
to the selected date(s):
With Calendar1
With .VisualAppearance
.Add &H23, "D:\Temp\ExCalendar.Help\seldate.ebn"
End With
.SelBackColor = &H23000000
End With
The following C++ sample changes the visual appearance for selected date:
m_calendar.GetVisualAppearance().Add( 0x23, COleVariant("D:\\Temp\\ExCalendar.Help\\seldate.ebn"));
m_calendar.SetSelBackColor( 0x23000000 );
The following VB.NET sample changes the visual appearance for selected date:
With AxCalendar1
With .VisualAppearance
.Add(&H23, "D:\Temp\ExCalendar.Help\seldate.ebn")
End With
.Template = "SelBackColor = 587202560"
End With
where the 587202560 value in hexa representation is &H23000000
The following C# sample changes the visual appearance for selected date:
axCalendar1.VisualAppearance.Add(0x23, "D:\\Temp\\ExCalendar.Help\\seldate.ebn"); axCalendar1.Template = "SelBackColor = 587202560";
where the 587202560 value in hexa representation is 0x23000000
The following VFP sample changes the visual appearance for selected date:
With thisform.Calendar1
With .VisualAppearance
.Add(35, "D:\Temp\ExCalendar.Help\seldate.ebn")
EndWith
.SelBackColor = 587202560
EndWith
where the 587202560 value in hexa representation is 0x23000000, 35 is 0x23 in hexa
The screen shot was generated using the following template: