c# WinForm: Remove or Customize the 'Focus Rectangle' for Buttons

Question

Is there a way to disable or better yet draw your own focus rectangle for a regular button control! (that dotted line seems so Windowss 95ish)

I've noticed that the control properties (FOR BUTTONS) does not have a ownerdrawfixed setting (which I don't know if that's even the route to use for the solution, although i've seen it used for customizing other controls).

Answer 1

Subclass the Button class and override OnPaint. If your override does not call base.OnPaint, nothing will be drawn for the button and you will have complete control (including the focus rectangle).

Answer 2

Getting this right is trickier than it sounds. No doubt one of the reasons that custom button painting isn't overridable. This worked as expected:

using System;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.Windows.Forms.VisualStyles;

class MyButton : Button {
    private VisualStyleRenderer renderer;
    protected override void OnPaint(PaintEventArgs e) {
        base.OnPaint(e);
        if (this.Focused && Application.RenderWithVisualStyles && this.FlatStyle == FlatStyle.Standard) {
            if (renderer == null) {
                VisualStyleElement elem = VisualStyleElement.Button.PushButton.Normal;
                renderer = new VisualStyleRenderer(elem.ClassName, elem.Part, (int)PushButtonState.Normal);
            }
            Rectangle rc = renderer.GetBackgroundContentRectangle(e.Graphics, new Rectangle(0, 0, this.Width, this.Height));
            rc.Height--;
            rc.Width--;
            using (Pen p = new Pen(Brushes.DarkGray)) {
                e.Graphics.DrawRectangle(p, rc);
            }
        }
    }
}