What factors control dialog button appearance?

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I am a little confused on what are the factors that contribute to the appearance of the UI elements (like buttons) on windows dialogs. My confusion appears out of the following observations:

1- I have visual studio 2010 installed on my system and when I create a MFC dialog , the buttons on the .rc have a sophisticated look , slightly rounded corners etc. when I build the MFC application same appearance comes in the resulting exe.

2- Now I get an application that is developed in VC 6, convert it to new vs 2010 project. When I open the .rc file the UI look is same as described above.but when I build and run the app , the ui look of the buttons is old , unsophisticated.

3- I include InitcommonControlEx() in the old code , and that changes nothing.Perhaps it is not related to this.

My question is what is controlling this look and feel of the ui elements? Is it something to do with the manifest file which directs which version of windows library the application should use?

if so, how can I update the manifest file of the old project , so that I get the new UI look and feel?

Posted 13-Apr-13 19:58pm

kaushik_code

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Santhosh G_ · Accepted Answer · 2013-04-13T20:51:00

Please add the following compiler directive to specify manifest file attributes.

C++

#if defined _M_IX86
#pragma comment(linker,"/manifestdependency:\"type='win32' name='Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls' version='6.0.0.0' processorArchitecture='x86' publicKeyToken='6595b64144ccf1df' language='*'\"")
#elif defined _M_IA64
#pragma comment(linker,"/manifestdependency:\"type='win32' name='Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls' version='6.0.0.0' processorArchitecture='ia64' publicKeyToken='6595b64144ccf1df' language='*'\"")
#elif defined _M_X64
#pragma comment(linker,"/manifestdependency:\"type='win32' name='Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls' version='6.0.0.0' processorArchitecture='amd64' publicKeyToken='6595b64144ccf1df' language='*'\"")
#else
#pragma comment(linker,"/manifestdependency:\"type='win32' name='Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls' version='6.0.0.0' processorArchitecture='*' publicKeyToken='6595b64144ccf1df' language='*'\"")
#endif

Please refer the msdn link to change the visual styles.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb773175%28v=vs.85%29.aspx[^]