Stony Brook Modula-2 archive and support pages

Enable your application to use XP visual styles

Frank Schoonjans, September 1, 2004

If you want your application to use the Windows XP visual styles, you must add an application manifest indicating that ComCtl32.dll version 6 should be used if it is available.

In principle, the manifest is placed in the resource section. However, an external XML-like manifest file can be used to add Windows XP visual style support to any program.

The name of the manifest file takes the form myprog.exe.manifest.

As an example we have created a manifest for the SBM2 m2e.exe program, so it uses version 6.0.0.0 of Microsoft's ComCtl32.dll ("Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls"):

<?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="StonyBrook.m2.m2e.exe"
   type="win32" /> 
   <description>Modula-2 development system.</description> 
   <dependency> 
   <dependentAssembly> 
        <assemblyIdentity type="win32" 
             name="Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls"
             version="6.0.0.0" 
             publicKeyToken="6595b64144ccf1df"
             language="*" 
             processorArchitecture="x86"/> 
   </dependentAssembly> 
   </dependency> 
</assembly>

Download manifest

Before placing the manifest in the SBM2 program folder, the Librarian Options dialog box looks like this:

This is the same dialog box after placing the manifest in the SBM2 program folder (and restarting the program)

To create your own manifest, replace name="StonyBrook.m2.m2e.exe" with name="CompanyName.ProductName.YourApp"; and <description>Modula-2 development system.</description> with the description of your program.

Some programs might have problems with such manifest file - if so, you can simply delete it.

Literature: Microsoft MSDN