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Why do design view widgets differ in appearance to runtime widgets?

Answer 1

+4 A:

You have to enable visual styles. Try the following in the Main():

System.Windows.Forms.Application.EnableVisualStyles();

I seem to remember in .Net 1.1 you could do this with an external manifest, but that stopped working with 2.0.

jbloomer 2010-01-07 17:48:26

Many thanks, that worked as expected. Why isn't this the default option? Are there unintended consequences or side effects?

16bytes 2010-01-07 18:04:48

I don't have any personal experiences of side effects, but I've only used it on XP and later, not sure why it isn't the default.

jbloomer 2010-01-08 09:05:21

Answer 2

+2 A:

Jbloomer's answer is correct.

I thought it might be helpful to add where I remember learning this: SSW's Rules to Better Windows Forms Applications.

The tips in there are very, very useful.

Josh Kodroff 2010-01-07 17:55:30

Great! Thanks for the link. The page mentions that using this may result in an exception being thrown in certain curcumstances. Have you had any problems with it (and possible work-arounds)?

16bytes 2010-01-07 18:06:07

I never experienced an exception being thrown with EnableVisualStyles, but don't take that as an authoritative answer as I was working on an internal app so the machines were all on the same version of XP. That said, if it works on SP2 and SP3, you're probably safe.

Josh Kodroff 2010-01-07 18:50:23

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Why do design view widgets differ in appearance to runtime widgets?

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