Making a vb.net application blend in with the Windows theme

Question

Previously I used to piddle around with VB6 to develop a couple of personal projects. Following my upgrade to Windows 7, I've decided to piddle about with vb.net Express Edition 2010.

If I wanted my VB6 application to blend in with the visual style of Windows, I would use the code and techniques described here. In short, I would use a Manifest file and a couple of calls within the application and most of the elements would look similar to the XP theme applied. If it was run on 2000, 95 or 98 then it would look like a standard Windows app. All was good.

Now I've moved onto vb.net, I've written a simple "Hello, world" application but I have absolutely no idea on how to make it look like the Windows 7 theme (eg. the font matches the system font and the widgets are styled correctly).

Just changing the font is a hack and will look out of place on machines that are set-up differently or run a different version of Windows where the default font is different.

How do I ensure my application matches the applied Windows theme irrespective of the version of Windows?

Answer 1

A lot of this is automatic if you create a Windows Forms app. They will (mostly) use the standard native Windows controls which draw themselves with the theme colors. But there are exceptions:

• the Form item template uses a default Font named Microsoft Sans Serif. You'll have to change it to Segoe UI to match the Vista/Win7 default. This is only necessary for the Form class, all controls you put on it will automatically inherit that font. On an XP machine, the Windows font mapper will notice that the font is missing and automatically fall back to MSS.

• the MenuStrip class uses custom rendering to draw the menu items. It tries to match the Windows style when you change the RenderMode property to System but the way it draws doesn't match the Win7 style. Right-click the toolbox, Choose Items and select MainMenu. That's a legacy version that does use Windows to draw menus so it produces the proper theme appearance.

• A very similar problem for ToolStrip. It's legacy version is ToolBar. This is a hard one to swallow, it doesn't use a rebar which make the tool bar look flat and ugly.

There are similar problems in WPF but with the added problem that WPF doesn't use any of the standard Windows controls. And gets it wrong in subtle places.