visual studio 2015 - Upgraded MFC application still looks old

Question

I have an MFC application written with VC6. I have upgraded it to VS2015 and it builds and runs. The application is a main exe with many DLL's that have dialogs in them.

However the application still looks like it is built with VC6. None of the GUI components have the Windows 7 look and feel, they all still look old style.

How can I make my existing application look more modern?

Answer 1

You should at least add this line to your project, for example add it to stdafx.h

#pragma comment(linker,""/manifestdependency:type='win32' 
name='Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls' version='6.0.0.0' 
processorArchitecture='*' publicKeyToken='6595b64144ccf1df' language='*'"")

Or add the following to your manifest file:

<dependency>
    <dependentAssembly>
        <assemblyIdentity
            type="win32"
            name="Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls"
            version="6.0.0.0"
            processorArchitecture="*"
            publicKeyToken="6595b64144ccf1df"
            language="*"
        />
    </dependentAssembly>
</dependency>

See also Enabling Visual Styles

It gets more complicated for owner draw controls. See this reference: Using Visual Styles with Custom and Owner-Drawn Controls

For ListView and TreeView controls, you can call this function for a more modern look (although it doesn't make any difference in Windows 10)

SetWindowTheme(m_ListView.m_hWnd, L"Explorer", NULL);
SetWindowTheme(m_TreeView.m_hWnd, L"Explorer", NULL);

_{* #pragma comment is Visual Studio specific. For other compilers you need to modify the manifest file}