[...]
So I was thinking that, somehow, I could create a Base Form so that all
these Form would inherit from it. The same way they'll inherit the Form
backcolor when I change the background, maybe there's a way that all
buttons
can inherit from a "base button".
If the button itself exists as an instance on the base form, then that
would work. All the forms inheriting the base form would also inherit the
base button _instance_ and that _instance_ would have the green background
you specify in the base form.
The only way to make a base button _class_ that all the other buttons in
the project inherit would be to go ahead and make that inherited button
class, and then change all of the button instances in all of the forms to
use that class instead of the Button class. A simple search-and-replace
might actually accomplish that, but it's an even more broad change than
the already-broad suggestion of changing all your forms to derive from a
single base form.
An alternative to the inheriting of a form with a button instance, or of
changing your buttons to use a new derived button class, would be to make
the base form as suggested before, but instead of putting the button
instance in the form itself for the inheriting classes to inherit,
override the OnLoad() method in the base form class, enumerate all your
controls in the form, and for every button change the background color to
whatever you want.
I am not aware of a general-purpose way that you can do something simple
and have all of your controls draw in a different color, for example. As
of Windows XP, there's an idea called "visual styles", but AFAIK this is
controlled by the OS; you can take advantage of it to use the "current
style" for your UI, but your application cannot override the current
visual style by automatically using a different visual style for rendering.
Pete
