Where can I get ready-made graphical solutions for developing applications on WinAPI?

Question

C++ / C#

I am writing a term paper on WinAPI. As a result, the application may turn out to be effective, but this graphic design with Windows 95 simply hurts the eyes. Tried to use GDI, but it's just awful:
(you can skip this and go to the question in bold)
1) a lot of messages just don't work;
2) for example, painted over the button, but did not display the text;
3) after clicking on the filled window (in my case, on the button) - it is repainted in the standard color;
4) redefined the button class - as a result, some white square is displayed on it (although the code is primitive and has no idea where this square came from);
5) it is generally inconvenient and I waste a lot of time on these graphic moments.
In short, this GDI is already very tired.
Can you recommend some libraries/frameworks to easily change the appearance of the application?
PS: I thought to write in QT, but it would not be counted as a coursework, because there is no WinAPI in the code either.

Answer 1

graphic design with Windows 95 just hurts the eyes

add to the beginning of the main

#pragma comment(linker,"\"/manifestdependency:type='win32' \
name='Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls' version='6.0.0.0' \
processorArchitecture='X86' publicKeyToken='6595b64144ccf1df' language='*'\"")

as a {not very good in terms of code} example, I attach my experiment on creating a WinApi Dialog-based application of the minimum size (without standard libs)
rgho.st/private/7YGwG8DYs/0fb58d3c3f9767de3370ed9d...
(there is a drag-n-drop, progressbar, multithreading, working with files, etc. - that's enough for you))
the dialog editor in MS VS is very good.

Answer 2

Tried to use GDI, but it's just awful:
(you can skip this and go to the question in bold)
1) a lot of messages just don't work;
2) for example, painted over the button, but did not display the text;
3) after clicking on the filled window (in my case, on the button) - it is repainted in the standard color;
4) redefined the button class - as a result, some white square is displayed on it (although the code is primitive and has no idea where this square came from);
5) it is generally inconvenient and I waste a lot of time on these graphic moments.
In short, this GDI is already very tired.

And you just need to figure out how window rendering works.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/d...

Answer 3

WinAPI is not about GDI.
Just use the standard elements.
Writing custom elements has always been a pain in the ass.
Right now, a custom edit would be useful to me, but after googling all day, I found out that there are no "simple" solutions, only writing from scratch.