Microsoft Windows XP Support from wxWindows ------------------------------------------- Windows XP introduces the themes (called "visual styles" in the Microsoft documentation) in Windows world. As wxWindows uses the standard Windows controls for most of its classes, it can take advantage of it without (almost) any effort from your part. The only thing you need to do if you want your program to honour the visual style setting of Windows XP is to add the manifest file to your program (this is not at all specific to wxWindows programs but is required for all Windows applications). wxWindows now includes manifest resources in wx.rc, so it should be enough to include "wx/msw/wx.rc" in your application's resource file and you get XP look automatically. If it doesn't work, follow the instructions below: For your convenience, below is an example manifest. It should be put in a file called "yourapp.exe.manifest" and put in the same directory where "yourapp.exe" resides. Alternatively, you can include the manifest in your applications resource section. Please see the MSDN documentation at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnwxp/html/xptheming.asp for more details. Here is the example manifest which you can put into controls.exe.manifest file to test theme support using the controls sample: --- cut here --- Controls: wxWindows sample application --- cut here --- There are a few minor problems with theme support in wxWindows currently which will be fixed in the next releases: - the buttons with non-default colours are owner-drawn and thus don't follow the visual style look but always have the default 3D look of the previous Windows versions - don't change the buttons colours if you want them to look nicely under Windows XP - wxCheckListBox control doesn't have the same appearance as the native checkboxes in Windows XP