Windows Forms Form (SfForm) Overview

8 Jul 20262 minutes to read

The SfForm is a window control for completely customizing the appearance of a form and loading a custom user interface in the title bar.

Key Features

The key features of the SfForm are as follows:

• Title bar customization: Customizes the appearance of the title bar and loads a user control into the title bar.

• MDI(Multiple Document Interface) customization : Adds MDI child forms and customizes the appearance of MDI child forms.

Choose between different form controls

Syncfusion^® WinForms suite comes up with the following different forms:

• SfForm
• MetroForm
• Office2007Form

SfForm

The SfForm window control allows you to completely customize its appearance. It supports loading a custom user interface in the title bar, adding MDI child forms, and customizing the appearance of child forms.

MetroForm

MetroForm is used to create a customizable window for the end user’s application. It supports various built-in skins and lets the user control its behavior and appearance.

Office2007Form

Office2007Form is an advanced standard form that offers a Microsoft Office2007 like UI and appearance. It supports various built-in color schemes and customization options to control its behavior and appearance.

SfForm vs MetroForm

Both SfForm and MetroForm controls are used for the same purpose. However, the SfForm control offers a rich set of features over MetroForm. For caption images and labels, use MetroForm. For custom user controls in the title bar and customizing the appearance of the form and MDI forms, use SfForm.

The list of some specific API differences between SfForm and MetroForm are as follows.

SfForm	MetroForm	Description
Style.Border	BorderColor	Changes the color of the border.
Style.TitleBar.Height	CaptionBarHeight	Increases the title or caption bar height.
Style.TitleBar.TextHorizontalAlignment	CaptionAlign	Displays the text on the title or caption bar that can be aligned horizontally.
Style.TitleBar.TextVerticalAlignment	CaptionVerticalAlignment	Displays the text on the title or caption bar that can be aligned vertically.
Style.TitleBar.IconVerticalAlignment Style.TitleBar.IconHorizontalAlignment	IconAlign	Displays the icon that can be aligned horizontally or vertically.

The list of features in SfForm over MetroForm are as follows.

Feature	Description
Loading UserControl to TitleBar	Loads any user control in the title bar instead of text by using the TitleBarTextControl property. Size of the user control should be set properly to fit the control within the title bar. To learn more about loading user control to TitleBar in SfForm, refer to here .
Border customization	Sets the active and inactive border colors by using the Style.Border and Style.InActiveBorder properties. To learn more about border customization in SfForm, refer to here .
Rich text formatting	Displays the rich text inside the title bar by enabling the AllowRichText property. To learn more about rich text formatting in SfForm, refer to here .