This sub-package delivers a full-featured solution for enhancing the user interface of your desktop applications. Meticulous design, attention to detail and an unbeatable level of stability and solidity makes Nix Visual Components one of the most reliable and convenient visual component packs available on the market today.

These are just some of the features that make our visual controls unique:

• Complete rewriting: Many of our visual controls have been completely rewritten from scratch to achieve smooth, 100% flicker-free drawing. Dump those flickery buttons, check boxes and radio buttons and switch to Nix Components™ today!

• AutoContents™: This feature is implemented by the majority of the controls that are intended to save values (e.g. check boxes, radio buttons and spin edit boxes). When enabled, AutoContents™ automatically saves the contents of a control to the Windows registry when the control is destroyed, and transparently retrieves them when the control is recreated at a later time. AutoContents™ makes it easier than ever to work with persistent settings!

• Parent form dragging: Want to create a title-bar-less form? No problem! Many of the controls in this sub-package come with a nifty FormDrag property, which when enabled makes controls behave like the title bar of the parent form. Thus, you can simply drop a TNixPanel control on your form, set its FormDrag property to True, and the end-user will be able to move the form by dragging the panel. It's that simple!

• Transparent support for Windows XP themes: All Nix visual controls are theme-compliant and automatically employ themes to paint themselves whenever these are available, i.e. on theme-capable operating systems such as Windows XP and later with themes enabled.

• Custom dynamic borders in non-themed environments: Get rid of those ugly plain borders! This feature allows you to replace the default borders of framed controls with any out of over ten eye-catching border styles. Also, with hover borders, you can have borders change automatically to a different style whenever the end-user moves the mouse pointer over them. Click here to see a sample.

• Custom background fills: Many of these controls come with built-in support for custom backgrounds, enabling you to have the background of a control filled with a custom gradient or tiled/stretched bitmap fill. Gradient fills can be highly customized by selecting the starting and ending colors, number of colors and one out of eight fill directions, whereas bitmap fills can be centered, tiled or stretched. Click here to see a sample.

• Custom text styles: This exciting feature enables you to give the caption of your controls a fancy look. Just choose a style (raised, lowered or shadowed) and you're ready to go! But that's not all! You can even customize the color of the individual shades that make up a text style. Click here to see a sample.

• TabOnReturn: When enabled, this property allows end-users who prefer to use the keyboard rather than the mouse to switch between windowed controls (such as edit boxes) by pressing the Enter key.

• Advanced scrolling events: If you need to perform special processing whenever the scroll bar of a control is moved, say goodbye to all that kludge code! All the scrollable controls in this sub-package provide two handy scrolling events: OnHScroll and OnVScroll.

• Unique auto-sizing capabilities: Have you ever wondered why a standard check box or radio button doesn't have an AutoSize property? You can now stop worrying about it! Nix check boxes and radio buttons sport a unique autosizing feature managed by an AutoSize property, which when set to True ensures that your check boxes and radio buttons will never get cropped on lower screen resolutions.

Tired of those plain, old-looking data-aware controls on non-themed operating systems? This sub-package delivers a handful of visually and functionally enriched data-aware controls that will definitely prove to be indispensable for enhancing the look and feel of your data-driven applications in a simple and hassle-free fashion.

The controls in this package inherit most of the features of their non-data-aware counterparts, including:

• Transparent support for Windows XP themes: All Nix visual controls are theme-compliant and automatically employ themes to paint themselves whenever these are available, i.e. on theme-capable operating systems such as Windows XP and later with themes enabled.

• Custom dynamic borders in non-themed environments: Get rid of those ugly plain borders! This feature allows you to replace the default borders of framed controls with any out of over ten eye-catching border styles. Also, with hover borders, you can have borders change automatically to a different style whenever the end-user moves the mouse pointer over them. Click here to see a sample.

• Custom background fills: Many of these controls come with built-in support for custom backgrounds, enabling you to have the background of a control filled with a custom gradient or tiled/stretched bitmap fill. Gradient fills can be highly customized by selecting the starting and ending colors, number of colors and one out of eight fill directions, whereas bitmap fills can be centered, tiled or stretched. Click here to see a sample.

• Custom text styles: This exciting feature enables you to give the caption of your controls a fancy look. Just choose a style (raised, lowered or shadowed) and you're ready to go! But that's not all! You can even customize the color of the individual shades that make up a text style. Click here to see a sample.

• TabOnReturn: When enabled, this property allows end-users who prefer to use the keyboard rather than the mouse to switch between windowed controls (such as edit boxes) by pressing the Enter key.

• Advanced scrolling events: If you need to perform special processing whenever the scroll bar of a control is moved, say goodbye to all that kludge code! All the scrollable controls in this sub-package provide two handy scrolling events: OnHScroll and OnVScroll.

• Unique auto-sizing capabilities: Have you ever wondered why a standard check box or radio button doesn't have an AutoSize property? You can now stop worrying about it! Nix check boxes and radio buttons sport a unique autosizing feature managed by an AutoSize property, which when set to True ensures that your check boxes and radio buttons will never get cropped on lower screen resolutions.

This sub-package provides a complete, one-stop suite of non-visual, system-level components that enable you to gain access to a wealth of key system resources, settings and parameters on the end-user's system, including, but not limited to, locale, regional settings, desktop, screen saver, memory, processor type and system paths.

We have also dropped in a number of components that encapsulate specific peripherals such as the screen, keyboard and mouse, which allow for instant and direct retrieval —and modification, where possible— of hardware parameters such as keyboard repetition and delay rates, mouse speed and double-click time, brands and models— and what's more, you can create your own screen savers and write directly to the screen's surface.

Implementing our non-visual components in your applications is as easy as dropping them onto a form and setting or reading their properties. With minimal code of your own, you can:

• Create custom screen savers
• Manipulate and react to system power states and events
• Limit your applications to only one concurrent instance
• Put your applications in the system tray—even animate your icons!
• Make your applications run automatically at system startup
• Capture and save single or sequences of screenshots
• Gain access to and manipulate open windows and running processes
• Beautify your applications' hints or tooltips with custom background fills
• Attach Windows message hooks to forms and controls
• Add custom buttons to your forms' title bar

The possibilities are endless. With Nix Non-Visual components, you will be able to enrich your applications with system functionality that you had never imagined was possible—all with little or no code! And what's more, unlike the competition's, our system components have proven to be superbly stable throughout years of testing. Switch to Nix Components™ today and dig those nasty random crashes in the past!