wxWidgets/docs/msw/winxp.txt

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 ---
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<assembly xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" manifestVersion="1.0">
<assemblyIdentity
    version="0.64.1.0"
    processorArchitecture="x86"
    name="Controls"
    type="win32"
/>
<description>Controls: wxWindows sample application</description>
<dependency>
    <dependentAssembly>
        <assemblyIdentity
            type="win32"
            name="Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls"
            version="6.0.0.0"
            processorArchitecture="X86"
            publicKeyToken="6595b64144ccf1df"
            language="*"
        />
    </dependentAssembly>
</dependency>
</assembly>
--- 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