   how to create photoshop-like toolbars
  i've been trying to figure this out for far longer than i care to admit, so i would be especially gratefull if anyone can help me out with this.i'd like to create a few floating toolbars in my application, like the ones in photoshop... exactly like the ones in photoshop, in fact. i've captured the styles and extended styles of the toolbars using spy++ shown here://styles:WS_POPUP | WS_VISIBLE | WS_CLIPSIBLINGS | WS_BORDER | WS_OVERLAPPED | 00000011//Extended styles:WS_EX_LEFT | WS_EX_LTRREADING | WS_EX_RIGHTSCROLLBAR | WS_EX_TOOLWINDOWif you plug these styles into a plain-jane windows shell app, you'll see a blank chromeless window with a solid black 1px border... and that's it! so i'm assuming they are creating their titlebar/chrome on the fly - but i have no idea how since their chrome matches all visual styles/themes that i've tried (classic/xp blue,olive,silver/media center theme). even the mimimize and close button (which cannot be paired exclusively with CreateWindowEx (to my knowledge)) look AND behave as all mimimize and close buttons do in regular windows in terms of color, highlighting and reacting to mouseover/press events. finally the height of the titlebar is a few pixels shorter than a standard toolbar window (for maximizing real estate, i'd assume) - further proving this was all created programmatically.so in summary, i want to acheive the exact visual and behavioral effect of the photoshop toolbars chrome, using the same programmatic techniques adobe uses... whatever they may be.any help with this is greatly appreciated!!!   
  Windows XP (and beyond) have functions for drawing theme elements.Vista goes even further and exposes even more theme functions. See here. Also, windows with the WS_EX_TOOLWINDOW extended style automatically have a smaller title bar.   ;  Try looking into GUI libraries, such as Qt, wxWindows, and GTK+ (gtkmm for C++). From there you could probably figure out how to do those effects, or find how someone else did them. </generic response>   