So in the past few days  I've been trying to achieve two objectives -

1. Improve mobile application user interfaces.
2. Brand my company (Anglia).

So with this in mind, I realised that the first candidate and the second could be the same thing.   Often in mobile applications, we need to display message boxes.   Ah ha, I thought.   perfect case for a bit of branding.

So instead of doing -

MessageBox.Show("Hello World");

I added my own class to provide a branded message box,  like

MessageBoxAnglia.Show("Hello World");

Here's the result -

Of course just like the usual MessageBox we can do all the normal questions and stuff,  like.

MessageBoxAnglia.Show("Is This Any Good?","Question",MessageBoxButtons.YesNo,MessageBoxIcon.Question,MessageBoxDefaultButton.Button1);

So how's this done.   Well quite simply I have just build a custom form, with our branded messagebox.

The code is fairly simple.     I'll give you the code behind the form so that you can design your own.  Before I do,  I think I have achieved both objectives,  branding and a slightly improved user interface.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Data;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows.Forms;

namespace AngliaTemplate
{
    public partial class MessageBoxAnglia : Form
    {
        public static DialogResult Show(string text)
        {
            return Show(text, "", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.None, MessageBoxDefaultButton.Button1);
        }
        public static DialogResult Show(string text, string caption)
        {
            return Show(text, caption, MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.None, MessageBoxDefaultButton.Button1);

        }

        public static DialogResult Show(string text, string caption, MessageBoxButtons buttons, MessageBoxIcon icon, MessageBoxDefaultButton defaultbutton)
        {
            bool switchedoffwait = false;

            if (Cursor.Current == Cursors.WaitCursor)
            {
                switchedoffwait = true;
                Cursor.Current = Cursors.Default;
                Application.DoEvents();
            }
            MessageBoxAnglia mb = new MessageBoxAnglia();
            mb.Text = caption;
            mb.Message = text;
            mb.Buttons = buttons;
            mb.FormIcon = icon;
            mb.DefaultButton = defaultbutton;
            DialogResult dr = mb.ShowDialog();
            Application.DoEvents();
            mb.Dispose();

            if (switchedoffwait)
            {
                Cursor.Current = Cursors.WaitCursor;
                Application.DoEvents();
            }
            return dr;

        }

        private string message = "";
        private MessageBoxButtons buttons = MessageBoxButtons.OK;
        private MessageBoxIcon formicon = MessageBoxIcon.None;
        private MessageBoxDefaultButton defaultbutton = MessageBoxDefaultButton.Button1;

        public string Message
        {
            set
            {
                message = value;
            }

        }

        public MessageBoxButtons Buttons
        {
            set
            {
                buttons = value;
            }
        }

        public MessageBoxIcon FormIcon
        {
            set
            {
                formicon = value;
            }
        }

        public MessageBoxDefaultButton DefaultButton
        {
            set
            {
                defaultbutton = value;
            }
        }

        public MessageBoxAnglia()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
        }

        private void btok_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            DialogResult = DialogResult.OK;
        }

        private void MessageBoxAnglia_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            if (this.Text == "")
            {
                this.FormBorderStyle = FormBorderStyle.None;
                this.WindowState = FormWindowState.Maximized;
            }
            this.label1.Text = message;
            if (message.Length > 100)
            {
                Font f = new Font(FontFamily.GenericSansSerif, 12, FontStyle.Regular);

                this.label1.Font = f;
            }

            this.btyes_from_yes_no_cancel.Visible = false;
            this.btno_from_yes_no_cancel.Visible = false;
            this.btcancel_from_yes_no_cancel.Visible = false;
            switch (buttons)
            {
                case MessageBoxButtons.OK:
                    this.mnucancel.Text = "";
                    break;
                case MessageBoxButtons.OKCancel:
                case MessageBoxButtons.RetryCancel:
                case MessageBoxButtons.YesNo:

                    if (buttons == MessageBoxButtons.RetryCancel)
                    {
                        this.mnuok.Text = "Retry";
                    }

                    if (buttons == MessageBoxButtons.YesNo)
                    {
                        this.mnuok.Text = "Yes";
                        this.mnucancel.Text = "No";
                    }
                    break;
                case MessageBoxButtons.AbortRetryIgnore:
                case MessageBoxButtons.YesNoCancel:
                    this.mainMenu1.MenuItems.Clear();

                    this.btyes_from_yes_no_cancel.Visible = true;
                    this.btno_from_yes_no_cancel.Visible = true;
                    this.btcancel_from_yes_no_cancel.Visible = true;

                    if (buttons == MessageBoxButtons.AbortRetryIgnore)
                    {
                        this.btyes_from_yes_no_cancel.Text = "Abort";
                        this.btno_from_yes_no_cancel.Text = "Retry";
                        this.btcancel_from_yes_no_cancel.Text = "Ignore";
                    }
                    break;

            }

            // icon

            switch (formicon)
            {

                case MessageBoxIcon.Asterisk:
                    this.pbicon.Image = loadimage("Asterisk.png");
                    break;
                case MessageBoxIcon.Exclamation:
                    this.pbicon.Image = loadimage("Exclamation.png");

                    break;
                case MessageBoxIcon.Hand:
                    this.pbicon.Image = loadimage("Hand.png");

                    break;
                case MessageBoxIcon.Question:
                    this.pbicon.Image = loadimage("Question.png");

                    break;
                default:
                    this.pbicon.Visible = false;
                    break;

            }

            // default button

            switch (buttons)
            {
                case MessageBoxButtons.OKCancel:
                case MessageBoxButtons.RetryCancel:
                case MessageBoxButtons.YesNo:
                    if (defaultbutton == MessageBoxDefaultButton.Button2)
                    {
                        //this.mnucancel.Focus();
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        //this.mnuok.Focus();

                    }
                    break;
                case MessageBoxButtons.AbortRetryIgnore:
                case MessageBoxButtons.YesNoCancel:
                    switch (defaultbutton)
                    {
                        case MessageBoxDefaultButton.Button1:
                            this.btyes_from_yes_no_cancel.Focus();
                            break;
                        case MessageBoxDefaultButton.Button2:
                            this.btno_from_yes_no_cancel.Focus();
                            break;
                        case MessageBoxDefaultButton.Button3:
                            this.btcancel_from_yes_no_cancel.Focus();
                            break;
                    }
                    break;
            }

        }

        private Bitmap loadimage(string imageName)
        {
            return new Bitmap(System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().
                GetManifestResourceStream("AngliaTemplate.Images." + imageName));
        }
        private void mnuok_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            DialogResult dr = DialogResult.None;
            switch (buttons)
            {
                case MessageBoxButtons.RetryCancel:

                    dr = DialogResult.Retry;
                    break;
                case MessageBoxButtons.YesNo:
                    dr = DialogResult.Yes;
                    break;
                default:
                    dr = DialogResult.OK;
                    break;
            }
            this.DialogResult = dr;
        }

        private void mnucancel_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            DialogResult dr = DialogResult.None;
            switch (buttons)
            {
                case MessageBoxButtons.YesNo:
                    dr = DialogResult.No;
                    break;
                case MessageBoxButtons.OK:
                    return;
                default:
                    dr = DialogResult.Cancel;
                    break;
            }
            this.DialogResult = dr;
        }

        private void btyes_from_yes_no_cancel_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            DialogResult dr = DialogResult.Yes;
            if (buttons == MessageBoxButtons.AbortRetryIgnore)
            {
                dr = DialogResult.Abort;
            }

            this.DialogResult = dr;
        }

        private void btno_from_yes_no_cancel_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            DialogResult dr = DialogResult.No;
            if (buttons == MessageBoxButtons.AbortRetryIgnore)
            {
                dr = DialogResult.Retry;
            }

            this.DialogResult = dr;
        }

        private void btcancel_from_yes_no_cancel_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            DialogResult dr = DialogResult.Cancel;
            if (buttons == MessageBoxButtons.AbortRetryIgnore)
            {
                dr = DialogResult.Ignore;
            }

            this.DialogResult = dr;
        }

        private void MessageBoxAnglia_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            if (buttons == MessageBoxButtons.OK)
            {
                this.DialogResult = DialogResult.OK;
            }
        }
    }
}