Changes to Existing Dialog System Applications that Use the Visual Styles

Applying the visual styles to existing Dialog System applications might result in changing the size and positioning of controls and in UI inconsistency of your applications between different versions of Windows. Micro Focus recommends that you test your applications in different versions of Windows to ensure that the controls and fonts used by the applications always display as expected.

The following list indicates some of the changes you can expect to see in existing applications when the visual styles are enabled.

Note: The screenshots show the appearance of controls on Windows 7 with the default theme enabled.

Differences when using the visual style controls and fonts

When the VISUAL STYLE FONTS option is selected in the Dialog System painter, the default, proportional and monospaced fonts are obtained from the visual styles that are active in the Windows operating system on which the application is running. The default font is used by Dialog System to calculate the number of pixels for each window and control.

Also note the following differences:

Buttons

When the background color of a button has changed, it is visible as a halo effect around the button:

Visual Styles Classic look

Check boxes and radio buttons

It is no longer possible to set a foreground color on check boxes and radio buttons:

Visual Styles Classic look

Date and Time Picker control

It is not possible to configure the colors of a date and time picker control:

Visual Styles Classic look

List box control

It is not possible to set the size of the list box control in Dialog System. Windows now determines the size of list box according to the number of items in the list and the size of the window:

Visual Styles Classic look

It is not possible to set the color of the selection (the part of the control that is always visible) in a list box:

Visual Styles Classic look

Scroll bars and buttons

The default background colour is visible around the edges of scroll bars and buttons only if the background color of the window or the control has changed:

Visual Styles Classic look

Spin button

The arrows area in the spin button control is slightly bigger than the entry field, if the control is not being drawn with 3D borders:

Visual Styles Classic look

Tab control

The tab area of the tab control is drawn incorrectly if the tab area is positioned at the bottom of the tab control:

Visual Styles Classic look