Visual Styles

[Chris Walter]

Hi,
I'm developing a COM add-in for outlook in c#, is there a
way to enable Visual Style i.e. the XP-look in this add-
in. Most infos deal with standalone application and not
with plug-ins. Since outlook2003 got visual styles
enabled there should be a way to use this.

Thanks in advance

Chris

 

[Alexey Yukhovich]

Hi,
I'm developing a COM add-in for outlook in c#, is there a
way to enable Visual Style i.e. the XP-look in this add-
in. Most infos deal with standalone application and not
with plug-ins. Since outlook2003 got visual styles
enabled there should be a way to use this.

Thanks in advance

Chris

I found solve in link
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;830033#6


Alexey Yukhovich

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

It requires Windows XP SP1 to start with.

I'm not sure about C#, but in VB6 you would create an Outlook.exe.manifest
file and place it in the same folder as the Outlook.exe file. That
automatically enables theming in the forms and controls of the addin.
However, that enables it for all addins and some may have problems with
theming. For example, option controls in frames have their labels appear as
blank black bars with no visible text unless you use an image control as the
container for the option control.

For C# you might be able to handle initialization of theming on a control by
control basis by drawing the controls yourself using API calls, but I don't
do C# so I'm not sure. That method usually uses a manifest file as a
compiled resource of the project.

See if there's any information about theming with C# at
http://www.microeye.com/resources/res_outlookvsnet.htm

 

[Chris Walteer]

Thanks Ken,

adding the manifest does the trick. I read about adding a
manifest, but thought that it would only work for
applications you coded yourself, because it was always
mentioned to add this manifest to the exe-file of your
app as a resource. But it was all that simple.

Christ