The other day, I decided to enable visual styles on one of my winform apps and found out that doing so breaks buttons with images. To get around this, I had to write a control which would inherit from the System.Windows.Forms.Button class and then handle the WM_PAINT message and draw the image myself. Below is the code I used.

/*
 * Showing images on XP-styled buttons.
 *
 * Author: Andrew Ma
 * http://blogs.msdn.com/ajma/archive/2005/01/21/358356.aspx
 *
 * Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
 * modification, are permitted.
 *
 * This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
 * Use of included code samples are subject to the terms specified at http://www.microsoft.com/info/cpyright.htm
 */

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

namespace ajma
{
 /// <summary>
 /// Represents a Windows button control that will use Visual Styles by default. This button will also draw images if specified.
 /// </summary>
 public class Button : System.Windows.Forms.Button
 {
  /// <summary>
  /// WM_PAINT message
  /// </summary>
  const int WM_PAINT = 0xF;

  /// <summary>
  /// Initializes a new instance of the Button class.
  /// </summary>
  public Button()
  {
   FlatStyle = FlatStyle.System;
  }

  /// <summary>
  /// Overridden. See <see cref="Control.WndProc"/>.
  /// </summary>
  /// <param name="m">The Windows <see cref="Message"/> to process. </param>
  protected override void WndProc(ref Message m)
  {
   // let base.WndProc go first
   base.WndProc (ref m);

   // if paiting (and there is a message), draw image on top of button
   if(m.Msg == WM_PAINT && this.Image != null)
   {
    Graphics g = Graphics.FromHwnd(this.Handle);
    switch(this.ImageAlign)
    {
     case ContentAlignment.BottomCenter:
      g.DrawImage(this.Image, centerX(), bottom());
      break;
     case ContentAlignment.BottomLeft:
      g.DrawImage(this.Image, left(), bottom());
      break;
     case ContentAlignment.BottomRight:
      g.DrawImage(this.Image, right(), bottom());
      break;
     case ContentAlignment.MiddleCenter:
      g.DrawImage(this.Image, centerX(), centerY());
      break;
     case ContentAlignment.MiddleLeft:
      g.DrawImage(this.Image, left(), centerY());
      break;
     case ContentAlignment.MiddleRight:
      g.DrawImage(this.Image, right(), centerY());
      break;
     case ContentAlignment.TopCenter:
      g.DrawImage(this.Image, centerX(), top());
      break;
     case ContentAlignment.TopLeft:
      g.DrawImage(this.Image, left(), top());
      break;
     case ContentAlignment.TopRight:
      g.DrawImage(this.Image, right(), top());
      break;
    }
    g.Dispose();
   }
  }

  #region Returns the X/Y points for the image to be drawn
  private int centerX()
  {
   return (this.Width - this.Image.Width) / 2;
  }

  private int centerY()
  {
   return (this.Height - this.Image.Height) / 2;
  }

  private int top()
  {
   return 4;
  }

  private int left()
  {
   return 4;
  }

  private int right()
  {
   return this.Width - this.Image.Width - left();
  }

  private int bottom()
  {
   return this.Height - this.Image.Width - top();
  }
  #endregion
 }
}

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.