Developing User Interfaces for Microsoft Windows

I consider the following to be really bad reasons to use custom controls:

• You think they are cool, but the standard controls would do the job just fine.
• You want your program to have a different look—just for the sake of being different.
• You found a really cool ActiveX control on the Internet and want to use it in your program somehow.

Whenever I use a program with nonstandard controls used for one of these reasons, I find it's as if the program is shouting, "Hey look at me! I'm not normal! I want your attention!"