Win32 custom message box

Question

I want to make a custom message box. What I want to customize is the button's text.

MessageBoxW(
  NULL,
  L"Target folder already exists. Do you want to overwrite the folder?",
  L"No title",
  MB_YESNOCANCEL | MB_ICONQUESTION
  );

I'd like to just change the buttons text to Overwrite, Skip, Cancel.
What's the most simple way?

I have to make this as having same look and feel with Windows default messagebox.

Answer 1

As said by others, a typical way is to create a dialog resource and have a completely independent dialog, which GUI you need to design in the way that it looks like standard dialog (to meet your request for feel and look). If you want to accept text messages, you might probably need to add code which resizes the window appropriately.

Still, there is another option for those who feel like diving into advanced things. While MessageBox API does not offer much for fint tuning, you still have SetWindowsHookEx in your hands. Having registgered the hook, you can intercept standard MessageBox window procedure and subclass it in the way you like.

Typical things include:

• changing button text
• adding more controls
• adding timed automatic close

Hooking standard window can do all of those.

UPD. Hey, I realized I have some code with SetWindowsHookEx to share: http://alax.info/blog/127

Answer 2

You could create an own dialog. Or you could use a window hook as described in this article.

Answer 3

Make a dialog resource (with a GUI editor, or by hand) and call DialogBox on it. There's no way to alter MessageBox behaviour, other than what's supported by its arguments.

That said, your message box can very well use stock Yes/No options.

Answer 4

The task dialog functionality introduced in Vista does exactly what you want and follows the prevailing system theme. However, if you have to support XP, then this will be of little comfort to you.

Answer 5

Here is a small open source library that allows you to customize Message Boxes. Developed by Hans Ditrich.
I have successfully used it in another POC that allows embedding a custom icon in such MessageBox that can be called even from a Console application.

I should also point to the Task Dialog. Here is an example of using it:

int nButtonPressed = 0;
TaskDialog(NULL, hInst, 
    MAKEINTRESOURCE(IDS_APPLICATION_TITLE),
    MAKEINTRESOURCE(IDS_DOSOMETHING), 
    MAKEINTRESOURCE(IDS_SOMECONTENT), 
    TDCBF_OK_BUTTON | TDCBF_CANCEL_BUTTON,
    TD_WARNING_ICON, 
    &nButtonPressed);

if (IDOK == nButtonPressed)
{
    // OK button pressed
}
else if (IDCANCEL == nButtonPressed)
{
    // Cancel pressed
}