This topic provides an overview of the WinFormManager™ component.
The new WinFormManager component enables you to style the areas of a form such as the caption area, form borders, and the close, restore, maximize, minimize and context help buttons. The form can be styled through the properties window and also via Infragistics AppStylist. The styling offered for this component is similar to the styling available in WinToolbarsManager™ (see Change the Style of WinToolbarsManager).
The styling allows the developer to disable the Aero and operating system themes on an individual form, and apply colors to the various areas of the form that are considered non-client areas.
Similar to the WinToolbarsManager component, WinFormManager will also prompt to add a panel to the form in order to properly position controls inside the client area, when dropped onto the form at design-time. You will have an option to choose between filling the form with WinPanel™ (extensive styling capabilities) or a standard Panel (light-weight). WinFormManager is defined in the Infragistics.Win assembly and derived from Infragistics.Win.UltraComponentBase assembly.
Unlike UltraWinToolbars , the FormDisplayStyle and IsGlassSupported properties disable the Aero theme, by default, displaying RoundedSizable border with ability to resize.
For example:
Even though these two components have mutual exclusive behavior both components can reside in the same form provided each is docked separately onto different container controls. Setting the WinToolbarsManager component’s DockWithinContainer property to the Form , then WinFormManager disables itself from form management and yield precedence to the WinToolbarsManager .
The WinFormManager component also allows you to:
Provide a consistent appearance to all the forms in your application
Style the MDI child menu bar and its buttons, which render when a maximized MDI child form is present on an MDI parent
Style the caption area of the form using Infragistics appearance objects like gradients
The following table lists some of the properties used in both components to customize the same client area of the form.
The following topics provide additional information related to this topic.