Vs.net Friendly Visual Styles?

Hi all.

Ive tried just about every visual style I can get my hands on which have the OSX/Mac flavor to them. Ive tried some really excellent ones. One thing always stings me in the arse when it comes to using them. They muck up dialogs within Visual Studio.NET. Im a fulltime developer and use it every single day, for most of the day, so this dialog mucking isnt something I can brush off as an inconvenience.

This was taken a while ago using a 3rd party (non MS) visual style. Any of you who use VS.NET on a regular basis should understand what Im talking about. This is the find dialog within vs.net. Other dialogs which are mucked up include the Project Properties, Options, ect. There are also elements of this dialog which have been forced off the screen due to the strange font size and typeface.

This kind of display does not occur with the default visual styles which ship with XP, and all dialogs appear with the selected visual style font and font size.

So, can anyone reccomend osx flavored visual styles which do not have this effect?

#143718

wow what an excellent question. i wish i knew what you were talking about, but i can catch on pretty easily. So come on, help the new guy out and help him memberS!!!!. ehhe well i say this is the question of the day. any of u guys agree?

-bunkka

#143722

Not that I actually know what I'm talking about, but I'm guessing this is only with msstyles? Do you have the same problem with Windowblinds?

#143723

Looks like possibly, your small window buttons are messed up, or the theme doesn't have them, so its resizing the normal window buttons.

Also, judging by the dialog boxes, you may want to try adding a manifest file for that program. I have no clue whether it can work for your application or not. Google for XPSkins, by Cronosoft.

You may want to try KoL's Studio28 style. No particular reason I'm recommending it, other than, I'm using it right now, so I know that MDI captions are included. Not sure if it will solve your problem, but it may be worth a shot.

#143739

Did you create the manifest file?

#143813

Yeah this is to do with maifests. Im sure someone has made one for VS.net.

This happens in alot of apps including Paint Shop Pro 7.

#143815

If you aren't sure what a manifest file is, it forces the application to support Windows XP Visual Styles. VS.NET probably doesn't have one because Microsoft don't think developers would want to use non Luna Visual Styles.

#143823

Ok, the solution, as alilm said, is to add a manifest file for visual studio...

In other words, create a file in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\Common7\IDE (Or wherever you've installed visual studio to) called devenv.exe.manifest.

Open that file in notepad, and put the following into it:

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

It's also worth noting that any non-themed app can be themed (if it uses common windows controls) by giving it a manifest file like this...

Also, be aware that this won't necessarily skin everything, but it seems to get most things...

#143832

Im amazed, and slightly appauled (although I suppose that I shouldnt be considering the author) that such an expensive tool would neglect to include a manifest for itself.

It was a good suggestion, but adding a manifest for devenv.exe only applied the button/checkbox/combo styles. All controls maintained their enormous font sizes, which is still throwing the dialogs off.

It might be worth noting that the visual styles which ship with XP (Luna, I belive its called) and its color variants do not have this effect on the dialogs. That is to say, that Ive been forced to run the ugly defaults because they do not impact the dialogs in this way.

Any other suggestions?

#143863

Check the font and font sizes in the VS you are using.

You may have to change them... Luna uses Trebuchet MS 10pt as it's default font and font size for title bars and 8 or 9 pt for dialog boxes and text.

I had that problem with TD 4.01 Panther skin, but a just changed the font size settings.

It cleared up the dialog box and button issue where the text either runs off the screen or gets chopped off.

#143875

A shot in the dark here but; Im assuming I have to do that with an app like StyleBuilder?

#143896

Originally posted by andrew_@Apr 13 2004, 03:18 PM

Im amazed, and slightly appauled (although I suppose that I shouldnt be considering the author) that such an expensive tool would neglect to include a manifest for itself.

It was a good suggestion, but adding a manifest for devenv.exe only applied the button/checkbox/combo styles. All controls maintained their enormous font sizes, which is still throwing the dialogs off.

It might be worth noting that the visual styles which ship with XP (Luna, I belive its called) and its color variants do not have this effect on the dialogs. That is to say, that Ive been forced to run the ugly defaults because they do not impact the dialogs in this way.

Any other suggestions?

Why should Visual Studio have a manifest file?

It's a development environment - most of the time using it is spent writing code - do visual styles apply to code? Exactly. Whilst it's a small task to add a manifest to Visual Studio, it's also something that millions of developers the world over (myself included) could care less about, and would rather those precious minutes of development time were spent on real features.

And it's no surprise that Luna keeps the dialogs' sizes as they should be - Luna was designed by people who had access to the people writing the UXTheme.dll, whereas other visual styles are written by people no different than you or I.

What you seem to neglect is that, as far as Microsoft are concerned, Luna or classic are the only themes people should be using, so why should they care about whether PrettyWindowsByJimmySmith.msstyle works in Visual Studio or not? To use visual styles is to break the EULA for Windows.

#143897

Originally posted by andrew_@Apr 13 2004, 09:43 AM

A shot in the dark here but; Im assuming I have to do that with an app like StyleBuilder?

Not really... most of the problems I had were fixed through the advanced settings button on the appearance tab in display properties.

#143914

Originally posted by Stevie BM@Apr 13 2004, 09:44 AM

To use visual styles is to break the EULA for Windows.

Not true... otherwise companies like TGTSoft would be in court right now for making StyleXP.

StyleXP intercepts the call to uxtheme.dll to allow alternate VS to be used.

MS just won't support it.

WindowBlinds was developed with support from MS to use the correct API calls.

That is how MS came up with the Visual Style theme engine. It was derived from working with Stardock.

Read some of the history on Stardocks own site in their news archives.

It explains why and how WindowBlinds works so well with XP.

#143920

ahhemmmm.....back on topic gents

Did you try reshacking the file devenv.exe? It will be a tedious process but you will have to replace every instance of MS Sans Serif that you find with a font that you want to use. In those same dialogs you can set the font size too. It will look something like this

FONT, 8, "Microsoft Sans Serif"

btw if you are running in a production environment, I STRONGLY RECOMMEND THAT YOU DO NOT DO THIS!!! Hacking the EXE can possibly make the application unstable.

Good luck.

#143946

Originally posted by Stevie BM@Apr 13 2004, 04:44 PM

What you seem to neglect is that, as far as Microsoft are concerned, Luna or classic are the only themes people should be using, so why should they care about whether PrettyWindowsByJimmySmith.msstyle works in Visual Studio or not?  To use visual styles is to break the EULA for Windows.

Technicaly microsoft has other visual styles too , sorry i coulnt resist to knock down the great stevie.

#143953

Originally posted by lostspyder@Apr 13 2004, 06:22 PM

Technicaly microsoft has other visual styles too , sorry i coulnt resist to knock down the great stevie.

Yeah, they do, but not in any currently released OS

Oh, and I'm not counting Longhorn - that's not release code

#143976

As a follow up, Im currently using a style called 'Ximian3' from getskinned.org, by nivneh. This visual style works well, and the dialogs look as they should.

I contacted the author and he states that its definately part of the visual style. If a visual style doesnt handle certain visuals, then the dialogs will be distorted. I havent gotten details on what aspects of the style need to be handled, but he did say his were built with StyleBuilder.

#143998

Slightly Off-Topic: Haven't The Skin Factory made a couple of official Visual Styles? I remember seeing one they did but I can't remember if you needed the UXTheme patch or not. (I'll correct myself, they were windowblinds themes but they were requested by MS).

anyway, back on topic, most visual styles use 8pt font for dialogs so it can't be the visual style making the font bigger cause the settings are smaller than for Luna. Maybe you need the font that the Visual Style is using or you could try changing the Windows default dialog font in the registry.

#144000

Yeah, well there are also some other Style direclty from Micrososft that come with a package called "WindowsXP Plus!" (4 or 5 Styles within and a couple of Screensavers)

But to the topc-problem: I agree to Alilm

:smartass:

#144023

Originally posted by pichfl@Apr 13 2004, 09:13 PM

But to the topc-problem: I agree to Alilm

:smartass:

ohh what somehow alilms same sugestion after mine is worthy of more credit

and im almost positive the MS plus pack comes with some gay looking visual styles

#144025

Originally posted by rjohnstone@Apr 13 2004, 01:25 PM

Not true... otherwise companies like TGTSoft would be in court right now for making StyleXP.

StyleXP intercepts the call to uxtheme.dll to allow alternate VS to be used.

MS just won't support it.

WindowBlinds was developed with support from MS to use the correct API calls.

That is how MS came up with the Visual Style theme engine. It was derived from working with Stardock.

Read some of the history on Stardocks own site in their news archives.

It explains why and how WindowBlinds works so well with XP.

No, TGTsoft didn't "sign" the EULA , YOU did. YOU are breaking it. Just like how a gun salesman can't be responsible if you shoot someone with the gun (extreme example).

It's also against the DMCA, it's reverse engineering. This is US only.

#144068

Don't add a manifest to your Visual Studios - it breaks your resource files for anyone without the same manifest...

I spent 3 hours trying ro fix a problem today, only to find that this was the cause... Thank god I was using source control!

#144324

i know i'm coming in on this topic a bit late.

but, if you would care to e-mail me an example program written in VS.net, i'll use it to pinpoint the exact part of the Aqua VS's that need to be changed to make them work with these apps..

if there is a way to fix the VS's i'd like to get it posted somewhere on Aqua-Soft, so that the authors of the many VS's we have here, can get their themes to be as compatable as possible.

#144376

Originally posted by ja450n@Apr 14 2004, 04:47 PM

i know i'm coming in on this topic a bit late.

but, if you would care to e-mail me an example program written in VS.net, i'll use it to pinpoint the exact part of the Aqua VS's that need to be changed to make them work with these apps..

if there is a way to fix the VS's i'd like to get it posted somewhere on Aqua-Soft, so that the authors of the many VS's we have here, can get their themes to be as compatable as possible.

The visual styles work with the apps if you give the applications themselves a manifest file (or embed said manifest as a resource)...

The problem we're talking about is when you apply a manifest to Visual Studio.Net itself to have it honour the themes.

#144443