Skins in delphi7

Question

I wish to skin my aplication and have noticed that there appears to be no obvious way to do this.

I am used to skinning files for java and wondered if there was any way of changing the appearance of the "standard" delphi7 application.

Edit:(taggs)

Answer 1

I've seen positive comments about AppFace, but I have not tried it.

Answer 2

Looks like there are some relevant links in this forum thread

Answer 3

Appface looks promising with the extreem looks and the need for just 2 lines of code. but thats a lot of money to make four buttons and a editbox look nice. linkrank does the same thing but does not look as good and costs even more this time about 180.

Again both seem to boast that you only need 2 lines of source code and theme file. the link to given forum did not seem to yeild any results apart from these two.

Would be br8 to find a free version even if i have to put in more work myself.

Edit: "suipack" is yet another tool for the same job

Re-Edit: VCL seems to be the basis of what is needed here some copenents listed on http://www.vclcomponents.com/catalog/Delphi_Skin

Re-Edit-2: found a freeware version here

Re-Edit-3: added coponent but not only is there no help file with this it seems to be incomplete as throws a cannot find "skins.pas" exception http://www.vclcomponents.com/Delphi/Form_Enhancement/VclSkin-info.html gone evaluate it and post results back up.

Answer 4

Have you looked at SpTBXLib? http://www.silverpointdevelopment.com/sptbxlib/index.htm

Answer 5

After spending hours installing it or not,, as the case was,, installed the unicodecontroler and the toolbar2000 but the toolbar200 seemed to have a issue with the library path and after i fixed it it would not alow me to reinstall, i had to do this as SpTBXLibDsgn_*.dpk would not install due to not finding reference of tb2kdsgn_d7.dpk..

this results in me going ARRRRRGGGHHHHHH and bashing my head on the wall, the only method for creating skins for free in delphi7 comes as 7 manual installs(as a noob this was hard) and thenn when i make a boo boo it wont let be uninstall,,, ouch

looks like there will be no styles for me....

Edit: if anyone wants to go for styles i seriously suggest the multiinstaller that i didnt see untill i had currupted my tbk2000 package :(

Answer 6

I use the Developer Express Skins library. This works well for standard components, and their own. You can create custom skins, or use their standard ones which include nicely designed haloween and winter ones. They also have a ribbon control to make your app Office 2007 look.

Answer 7

Another skinning component set for Delphi is AlmediaDev

Answer 8

AFAIK, there are two Delphi components available to skin your application without requiring any code, but both are not free

VCLSkin

SuiSkin