SftTabs/DLL 7.0

Professional tabbed interfaces for Windows — designed, not just coded

Every application eventually runs out of room. Dialogs grow crowded, menus cascade three levels deep, and users start hunting for the setting they know is in there somewhere. SftTabs/DLL solves that the way the physical world always has — with tabs. Like the dividers in a file cabinet or the labeled sections of a notebook, it organizes multiple dialogs, panels, and menu selections into clean, familiar layouts your users understand at a glance. Complexity goes down; usability goes up.

Built as a native DLL for the Windows™ operating system, SftTabs/DLL has long been the tab control of choice for C and C++ developers who want far more than the stock Windows offering. Version 7.0 takes it further than ever — richer visuals, deeper accessibility, and modern platform support, all wrapped in the same easy-to-use API developers already rely on.

One control, endless looks

SftTabs/DLL scales from a simple single-row strip of tabs to a rich, multi-row, multi-color notebook — and everything in between. Start with any of 75 customizable tab styles, then make them your own: solid or gradient fills, per-tab colors that change automatically with a tab's status, fixed or variable widths, and single- or multi-row layouts that flow automatically as tabs are added. Support for up to 256 tabs across as many as 32 rows means even the most feature-dense application stays organized.

The polish runs deep. Dress your control with background bitmaps and transparent surfaces, smooth transition effects, and full Windows Themes support. Put images on every tab — for regular, hot, and disabled states alike — drawn from bitmaps, icons, image lists, GDI+ images, or even checkboxes and radio buttons. And when a preset simply won't do, owner-drawn tabs and backgrounds hand you the brush for completely custom rendering.

Interaction your users expect

Great-looking tabs are only half the story. SftTabs/DLL behaves the way modern users assume it will: drag-and-drop reordering, hidden and disabled tabs, optional close buttons on individual tabs, and built-in Minimize, Restore, and Close buttons. Labels can span single or multiple lines, align left, right, or center, carry keyboard mnemonics for fast access, and truncate gracefully with ellipses when space is tight. Add ToolTips and flyby highlighting for discoverability, scrollable tabs with your own customizable scroll-button bitmaps for long tab strips, and the choice of a tab control with or without a client area. Ready-made wizard-style dialogs, tabbed dialogs, and tabbed windows let you assemble sophisticated interfaces in a fraction of the usual time.

A modern Windows citizen

Version 7.0 is built for how Windows looks and works today. It automatically tracks the system "Choose your mode" setting for seamless dark mode, honors Windows High Contrast for accessible viewing, and is Per-Monitor v2 DPI aware so your tabs stay crisp on every display in every configuration. Accessibility isn't an afterthought: a built-in UI Automation provider with live-region announcements lets screen readers — including Narrator, NVDA, and JAWS — read and navigate your interface right out of the box.

Design it before you write a line of code

The SftTabs/DLL Wizard lets you design and test a complete tab control without any programming at all. Set your tab labels, choose the number of rows, pick colors, place icons and bitmaps — and see the result immediately. Once the look is exactly right, the Wizard generates the required run-time code for C or C++ with MFC, so the leap from design to working application is measured in clicks, not hours. Your programming effort is kept to an absolute minimum.

Built for developers, top to bottom

SftTabs/DLL is a complete, ground-up implementation — not a sub- or superclassed Windows control — which means predictable behavior and no inherited quirks. Work in C or C++ (MFC) with Visual Studio, or drive the DLL from other languages using the standard SendMessage Windows API and the supplied header-file definitions. Class definitions for the Microsoft Foundation Class Library ship in the box, and so does the source code for the MFC classes that handle tab-control access, tabbed dialogs, and tabbed windows.

New in 7.0, SftTabs/DLL is ready for the way many developers now write software: it ships with documentation formatted for AI coding assistants — an offline, full-text API reference built for large-language-model grounding, plus an AGENTS.md pointer file — so assistants such as Claude, GitHub Copilot, and Cursor can answer questions and generate code against the complete API.

Runs where you ship

SftTabs/DLL supports Windows 10 and above, covering 64-bit and 32-bit applications on Intel processors, plus ARM64 applications on Windows 11 and above. UNICODE support is available on every platform, and the same easy-to-use API works identically across all of them — write once, deploy everywhere your users are.

Royalty-free, by design

Ship with confidence. Any application you build can use SftTabs/DLL royalty-free in run-time mode — you simply distribute the DLL alongside your application (some restrictions apply). Design-time features live with each developer: every developer who needs access to any part of the product licenses their own copy, and there are no per-user or per-copy fees on the software you deliver to your customers.

SftTabs/DLL 7.0 — organize your interface, delight your users, and keep your development time short.