Adding Buttons To Side Of Window On Windows Form

Question

I would like to add buttons to side of my windows form on C# (in outside). The buttons should move together as soon as when the window was moved.

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Answer 1

I see two options:

• Either put the buttons in a separate form and make both forms stick together by coding the Move and maybe Resize events.

• Or, simpler, make the Form transparent and remove Border and Title area. I would go for this option.

Here you go:

First you style the Form by:

• Setting this.ControlBox = false;
• Setting this.MaximizeBox = false;
• Setting this.MinimizeBox = false;
• Setting this.Text= "";
• Setting this.FormBorderStyle = System.Windows.Forms.FormBorderStyle.None;
• Setting this.BackColor = System.Drawing.Color.Fuchsia;
• Setting this.TransparencyKey = this.BackColor;

Now add to the Form

• a Panel that fills the right, main portion of the Form
• the Button you want attached
• a Label (label1) inside the main Panel, filling the top and holding the form's title text
• a Tab control etc..

Finally we want to add code to make the form moveable:

using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
..

public const int WM_NCLBUTTONDOWN = 0xA1;
public const int HT_CAPTION = 0x2;

[DllImportAttribute("user32.dll")]
public static extern int SendMessage(IntPtr hWnd, int Msg, int wParam, int lParam);
[DllImportAttribute("user32.dll")]
public static extern bool ReleaseCapture();

private void label1_MouseDown(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
{
    if (e.Button == MouseButtons.Left)
    {
        ReleaseCapture();
        SendMessage(Handle, WM_NCLBUTTONDOWN, HT_CAPTION, 0);
    }
}

You can look up code to make the window sizeable, too..

You can look up code to give the button a non-rectangular shape using a region. Note that you need to avoid anti-aliased pixels here or else the Fuchsia will shine through.