Add Windows XP Theme Style to your current projects

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The following steps introduces XP Theme Style to your project:

1. Insert Resource, choose "Custom", input "24" (without quotes) as resource type
2. Copy and paste the following XML sheets into the editor.

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?> 
   <assembly 
      xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" 
      manifestVersion="1.0">
    <assemblyIdentity 
       processorArchitecture="x86" 
       version="5.1.0.0"
       type="win32"
       name="test.exe"/>
    <description>Test Application</description>
    <dependency>
     <dependentAssembly>
       <assemblyIdentity
            type="win32"
            name="Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls"
            version="6.0.0.0"
            publicKeyToken="6595b64144ccf1df"
            language="*"
            processorArchitecture="x86"/>
     </dependentAssembly>
    </dependency>
   </assembly>
   

   You can replace test.exe and Test Application with any string you like. This will not affect the behaviour of the application.

3. Change resource ID to 1.
4. Add calls to InitCommonControls() in your WinMain(). Don't forget to include commctrl.h and link comctl32.lib. Rebuild your project, all done :-)

This special resource type is only recognized by Windows XP. In any other version of Windows (Windows 9x/NT/2000), the program simply runs as before.

You can also create a manifest file with the same name of the EXE file, plus an extension .manifest, which contains the same lines as the ones above. For our test.exe, the manifest file is test.exe.manifest.