I’m using Delphi 7 to develop misvCRM and I came across a tip the other day on how to make the IDE (integrated development environment) assume the XP theme. Making the IDE themed does not really add anything to the development effort but it is sometimes nice to have a bit of a change. Here are two screenshots of the options dialog box showing how it looks like before the application of the theme and after.
Before:
After:
Comparing the two images you can see that the one with the theme applied looks a bit more ‘modern’. To implement the theme all you have to do is:
- Get hold of an XP manifest file. The format of the name is usually of the form xxxx.exe.manifest.
- Rename the manifest file to delphi32.exe.manifest.
- Copy the manifest file to the bin folder of Delphi 7.
- Restart Delphi 7.
If you do not want to do the first two steps you can download a copy of the delphi32.exe.manifest file from here.
Now I wonder how my Delphi 7 IDE would look like if I implement a Vista theme? I might just try it. Till next time.
1 user responded in this post
I remember pulling the same trick with Visual Studio 6 when I first moved to XP, but there were lots of pieces of the UI that just didn’t work properly. I guess that makes the Delphi IDE a better-written GUI…
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