Visual Studio Custom Skins (Without Paying)

Mystalia — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 02:48:39 +0000

It’s a nightmare to get custom skins without paying an arm and a leg for such a simple part of your program. Some companys ask for hundreds of dollars for simple .NET classes, it’s crazy, anyway, here’s a workaround that is 100% legal and 100% free.

This screenshot is VERY easy to achieve, no fancy software just 1 class, one dll, one msstyle and a few lines of code.

Below are the class file and dll, and i’ve thrown in a couple of msstyles to get you going, theres plenty more on the internet, theres a few on SkinBase.org. We are using USkin (Homepage) its the classes that do all the work, the documentation and examples are terrible but after trial and error I have figured it out and will explain in this article.

Download Uskin easy pack here

Right click the solution explorer, add an existing item (“USkinSDK.cs” and “USkin.dll”).
Make sure the dll properties are set to “Content” and “Copy Always”.
Make sure the class properties are set to “Compile” and “Never Copy”.

The code is simple.

using USkin; // declare it.

private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
Size presize = this.Size; // Get the correct form size before the GUI mucks it up.
USkinSDK.USkinInit("", "", "GUI.msstyles"); // Replace the text accordingly with your msstyles file.
USkinSDK.USkinLoadSkin("GUI.msstyles"); // And again here.
this.Size = presize; // Re-establish the form size.
}

Simple and effective to make your applications look more professional. I will note however that you should get prior permission from the skin creator before using your application commercially, or just create your own, that’s easy too.

Hope this helps!

Mystalia Studios » skins

Visual Studio Custom Skins (Without Paying)