What does the Windows manifest and Themes give you

[Rick Lipkin]

To All

I have looked at adding the Windows manifest code to my .rc files .. but was just curious .. just what does adding Themes ( really ) give you ??

Rick Lipkin
SC Dept of Health, USA

// Add this to your resources RC file

#ifdef __FLAT__
1 24 "WindowsXP.Manifest"
#endif

#ifdef __64__
1 24 "WinXP/WindowsXP.Manifest64"
#endif

[Enrico Maria Giordano]

Just the Windows XP look. Only under Windows XP, of course.

EMG

[James Bott]

>.. just what does adding Themes ( really ) give you ??

Professional looking applications.

If one is marketing their software, I would say this is incredibly important. Us programmers think logically, and we figure if it works, then it is not so important what it looks like. The rest of the population, generally are not logical thinkers. They figure if it looks professional, then it must work professional, and visa versa--if it looks bad, then it must work the same.

I have mentioned this example before, but consider the IPod. Last year they did 15 million dollars in sales. Most IPods just play music, some display pictures and movies. My PDA does all of that and ten times more. But all PDA sales combined only sold 7 million dollars worth last year. What does the IPod have--style! It sells on its "cool factor," not on its feature list. Apple has twice the sales with a shorter feature list, just because the product looks good.

Rick, since your users are employess, software sales is not an issue. But, your professional image is, so I would still say the it is very important for your software to look professional.

And adding themes capability is so simple that I can't think of any reason not to do it.

Regards,
James

[Rick Lipkin]

James

The reason I asked about themes is more along the line of Vista and 'aero'. I always use MDI and Mdi Children for most of my applications.

I stated up 'aero' on one of my Mdi applications and indeed I had a transparent frame .. mdichilds seem to be imune to 'aero'.

I guess my idea of themes is colors, backgrounds are all chosen by the user. I generally add color to my dialogs and listboxes.

Was just curious if I added the manifest what effect it would have and if it would also work with Vista.

Thanks
Rick Lipkin

[Antonio Linares]

Rick,

> Was just curious if I added the manifest what effect it would have and if it would also work with Vista.

Vista also uses themes, the Vista one, but it doesn't look like the XP one.

Changes are mostly on the way the standard Windows controls are painted.

[James Bott]

Rick,

>I guess my idea of themes is colors, backgrounds are all chosen by the user. I generally add color to my dialogs and listboxes.

A theme is a set of colors and icons and button and scrollbar tab shapes, etc. The user can change some of the colors but not all and none of the rest of the items.

>Was just curious if I added the manifest what effect it would have and if it would also work with Vista.

The simple thing to do is add a manifest file to the same directory as your application, then run it--it will be theme enabled. Put this text into an ASCII file and name it [your app name].exe.manifest (yes, it has two extensions). You don't have to change anything else.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<assembly xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" manifestVersion="1.0">
<assemblyIdentity version="1.0.0.0" processorArchitecture="X86" name="CompanyName.ProductName.YourApp" type="win32"/>
<description>YourApp</description>
<dependency>
<dependentAssembly>
<assemblyIdentity type="win32" name="Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls" version="6.0.0.0" processorArchitecture="X86" publicKeyToken="6595b64144ccf1df" language="*" /> </dependentAssembly>
</dependency>
</assembly>

When you run the app, it will now be theme enabled. Of course, it has to be running under XP or Vista and a theme has to be selected.

There is an issue which I don't know the answer to yet, and that is if you are coloring your application, it may not look good when run under different themes. This is not really a new problem since Windows has always had color schemes and users have been able to even change those colors. But, it would be nice if we could detect which theme was running, so we could use different color sets depending on the theme.

James