Custom titlebar icons - Vista / Windows7

Question

I'd like to add a custom button to my Window's titlebar. This doesn't need to work on XP - just Vista and later. Searching on the net yields lots of results for doing it the WM_NCPAINT way (eg. http://www.catch22.net/tuts/custom-titlebar ). Is there a way to do this using Vista/Windows7 with Aero is enabled?

Thanks for any help, Dan.

Answer 1

There is no simple way to do this, even on Vista/7. If you don't want to use the WM_NC* method, you can create your window without the WS_CAPTION, WS_SYSMENU, etc. styles, use DwmExtendFrameIntoClientArea to make a portion of your client area into the window frame, and then draw the titlebar yourself. However, this isn't less work than using the MC_NC* method because you will need to implement all of the titlebar features (system menu, close box, maximize box, etc.) yourself.