Win32 custom message box - windows

Question

I want to make a custom message box. What I want to customize is the button's text.
MessageBoxW(
NULL,
L"Target folder already exists. Do you want to overwrite the folder?",
L"No title",
MB_YESNOCANCEL | MB_ICONQUESTION
);
I'd like to just change the buttons text to Overwrite, Skip, Cancel.
What's the most simple way?
I have to make this as having same look and feel with Windows default messagebox.

Answer 1

As said by others, a typical way is to create a dialog resource and have a completely independent dialog, which GUI you need to design in the way that it looks like standard dialog (to meet your request for feel and look). If you want to accept text messages, you might probably need to add code which resizes the window appropriately.
Still, there is another option for those who feel like diving into advanced things. While MessageBox API does not offer much for fint tuning, you still have SetWindowsHookEx in your hands. Having registgered the hook, you can intercept standard MessageBox window procedure and subclass it in the way you like.
Typical things include:
changing button text
adding more controls
adding timed automatic close
Hooking standard window can do all of those.
UPD. Hey, I realized I have some code with SetWindowsHookEx to share: http://alax.info/blog/127

Answer 2

You could create an own dialog. Or you could use a window hook as described in this article.
An archived version of the article can be found on web.archive.com.

Answer 3

Make a dialog resource (with a GUI editor, or by hand) and call DialogBox on it. There's no way to alter MessageBox behaviour, other than what's supported by its arguments.
That said, your message box can very well use stock Yes/No options.

Answer 4

The task dialog functionality introduced in Vista does exactly what you want and follows the prevailing system theme. However, if you have to support XP, then this will be of little comfort to you.

Answer 5

I know this question is old, but I just stumbled upon it now.
I would like to expand the other answers in regards to using a TaskDialog instead of a MessageBox. Here's a concise example of using a TaskDialog to do precisely what was asked; change the button's texts:
const TASKDIALOG_BUTTON buttons[] = { {IDYES, L"Overwrite"}, {IDNO, L"Skip"}, {IDCANCEL, L"Cancel"} };
TASKDIALOGCONFIG taskDialogConfig = {
.cbSize = sizeof(TASKDIALOGCONFIG),
.pszMainIcon = TD_WARNING_ICON, // TaskDialog does not support a question icon; see below
.pButtons = buttons,
.cButtons = ARRAYSIZE(buttons),
.pszWindowTitle = L"No title",
.pszContent = L"Target folder already exists. Do you want to overwrite the folder?"
};
TaskDialogIndirect(&taskDialogConfig, NULL, NULL, NULL);
Some noteworthy things:
You need to use TaskDialogIndirect, not the basic TaskDialog function
when not specifying a parent window, the icon specified in pszMainIcon is displayed in the title bar as well
There is no equivalent to the MessageBox's MB_ICONQUESTION, quoting a quote from this forumpost: Don't use the question mark icon to ask questions. Again, use the question mark icon only for Help entry points. There is no need to ask questions using the question mark icon anyway—it's sufficient to present a main instruction as a question.
checking which button was selected would have to be done by passing a pointer to an int as the second argument of TaskDialogIndirect and checking its value on return (the documentation should be pretty clear)

Answer 6

Here is a small open source library that allows you to customize Message Boxes. Developed by Hans Ditrich.
I have successfully used it in another POC that allows embedding a custom icon in such MessageBox that can be called even from a Console application.
I should also point to the Task Dialog. Here is an example of using it:
int nButtonPressed = 0;
TaskDialog(NULL, hInst,
MAKEINTRESOURCE(IDS_APPLICATION_TITLE),
MAKEINTRESOURCE(IDS_DOSOMETHING),
MAKEINTRESOURCE(IDS_SOMECONTENT),
TDCBF_OK_BUTTON | TDCBF_CANCEL_BUTTON,
TD_WARNING_ICON,
&nButtonPressed);
if (IDOK == nButtonPressed)
{
// OK button pressed
}
else if (IDCANCEL == nButtonPressed)
{
// Cancel pressed
}