Win32 Visual Styles

Nothing to do with Basternae, this is just a reminder to myself how to enable the visual styles for controls available in Windows XP and newer in a WIN32 project in Visual Studio 2010.  Had to do this at work and it’s a little tough to look up.

1. Edit Project settings.
2. Under Linker->Manifest File edit “Additional Manifest Dependencies” and add:

type='win32' name='Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls' version='6.0.0.0' processorArchitecture='*' publicKeyToken='6595b64144ccf1df' language='*';%(AdditionalManifestDependencies)

Suddenly Win32 controls will stop looking like they’re from Windows 3.1.  The modern control styles were introduced in ComCtl32.dll version 6, and Windows apps use version 5 by default unless you tell them not to.