c# WinForm: Remove or Customize the 'Focus Rectangle' for Buttons

Question

Is there a way to disable or better yet draw your own focus rectangle for a regular button control! (that dotted line seems so Windowss 95ish)

I've noticed that the control properties (FOR BUTTONS) does not have a ownerdrawfixed setting (which I don't know if that's even the route to use for the solution, although i've seen it used for customizing other controls).

Answer 1

Getting this right is trickier than it sounds. No doubt one of the reasons that custom button painting isn't overridable. This worked as expected:

using System;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.Windows.Forms.VisualStyles;

class MyButton : Button {
    private VisualStyleRenderer renderer;
    protected override void OnPaint(PaintEventArgs e) {
        base.OnPaint(e);
        if (this.Focused && Application.RenderWithVisualStyles && this.FlatStyle == FlatStyle.Standard) {
            if (renderer == null) {
                VisualStyleElement elem = VisualStyleElement.Button.PushButton.Normal;
                renderer = new VisualStyleRenderer(elem.ClassName, elem.Part, (int)PushButtonState.Normal);
            }
            Rectangle rc = renderer.GetBackgroundContentRectangle(e.Graphics, new Rectangle(0, 0, this.Width, this.Height));
            rc.Height--;
            rc.Width--;
            using (Pen p = new Pen(Brushes.DarkGray)) {
                e.Graphics.DrawRectangle(p, rc);
            }
        }
    }
}