Visual C# Look and Feel nice in XP, ordinary in 2000, why?

• Rent

  Oh, another thing, it looks like you may have some other non-standard display setting enabled, try setting everything back to the default and see if the dialogs look better.
  
  

• JaysonC

  I haven't misunderstood you, I realise that you were talking about Visual Studio's dialogs. However, you also asked how to avoid this in your own application, hence the links to the User Interface Design Guidelines.
  
  

• jvlake

  I've seen this in the Items editor for ToolStrips and the CheckOut form from TeamSystem (in TeamSystem there are other layout problems like a control not being anchored or a group box that is too small and clips one of the children).
  With SQL Server 2005 installed there is a form (from the menu File\Open\Analysis Services Database) with the same problems.
  
  Also there is something strange with the Button rendering with Classic theme. The default button appears to be smaller than the others. It seems like it doesn't draw the border that it should.
  
  (VS2005 Beta 2, Windows XP default display settings)
  
  

• KIRANKU

  The only reason why I can think that the dialog buttons are larger is because you are running at a higher DPI. Are you running under large fonts

  
  
  

• Dan-RG

  Hi,
  
  That's true, I've got this set to 6. I can't use Windows with the default.
  
  Still, I set my 'Active Window Border' back to 1 to try it. And, apart from crashing the Visual Express C# IDE as soon as I gave it focus ;-) the dialogs look 'exactly' the same. That is, afte I restarted, the buttons are still way too big, and well, I could send you another screenshot but they would be identical.
  
  So, the problem remains. I suppose the question more specifically is, "if other applications, like Office, run and look nice on my Windows 2000 PC as it is, right now, why does Visual C# look so awful " If we can't fix this, no problem... at least I hope somebody has advice on how to avoid this in my own applications.
  
  
  

• ngmvista

  Sorry, my mistake
  
  

• Frapazoid

  Check your Display's Appearance scheme.  It appears like you've set your borders to non default width. 
  
  Go to Display Properties -> Appearance -> Advanced and check the "Active Window Border" size.  The default is "1".
  

• Paul Fuhrmann

  Hi
  
  Actually, I think you might be misunderstanding a little.
  
  The dialogs that look clunky with buttons that don't fit are those that belong to the Visual C# IDE, not ones that I'm developing! ;-)
  
  I'm querying why are Visual C# Express's dialogs so clunky looking.
  
  
  

• Glynnder

  Hey - Please log bugs against each of these dialogs that are exhibiting symptoms like the ones you pointed out. This absolutely should not happen under Windows 2000.

  VS 2005 will look best under Windows XP, but it should not look terrible under Windows 2000.

  So, please do open bugs against these at the MSDN Product Feedback Center and include the following information:

  1. Repro steps to get the affected dialog on screen.
  2. Icon title font face and font size.
  3. System DPI setting.
  4. Monitor resolution.
  5. Any information about 3rd party utilities that could monkey with the system UI.

  Thanks,
  Aaron

  
  
  

• Pepe Ballaga

  It is very easy to develop a good-looking user interface using .NET. In .NET 2.0 all the controls support Windows XP Visual Styles out of the box.
  
  Also have a look at the Windows User Interface Guidelines, although it hasn't been updated for .NET and is a little dated, it still contains some good advice.

  
  
  

• Allan Kemp

  Hi,
  
  Actually, this link you gave gives me a
  

  HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found

  
  http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn/lab.msdn.microsoft.com/productfeedback
  

• Dougal

  I've seen it on Windows XP with themes enabled and default display settings, too.
  There are some forms with buttons that have 27px height instead of 23px.
  I'll try to make a list with this forms and open a bug if someone else doesn't do it first.
  
  

• Pavel Dournov - MSFT

  Hey Mike - Have you seen this in VS 2005 Beta 2 There were some issues with the AutoScaleBaseSize property in managed dialogs previously, but I believe we corrected all of this between Beta 1 and Beta 2. Please do let us know if you see any of these problems still occuring.

  Thanks,
  Aaron

  
  
  

• David_52

  Hi,
  
  My font size is 'Small fonts' 96dpi. Here's a screenshot with a dialog from a stock-standard Application in the top-left corner for contrast.
  
  The VC# dialog, to my eyes, has over-large buttons, looks a bit straggly with no defining borders or anything and has very big spaces with nothing in them. And, overall, proportionately too large for just a dialog.
  
  http://home.swiftdsl.com.au/~spurrymoses/tmp/vcsharpide.jpg
  
  And this one where the button doesn't even fit on the dialog.
  http://home.swiftdsl.com.au/~spurrymoses/tmp/bigbuttons.jpg
  
  I'm hoping to avoid having my applications look like this on Windows 2000.
  
  It actually looks a lot like a Java Swing dialog from before 1.4 SDK ;-)
  
  
• Visual C# Look and Feel nice in XP, ordinary in 2000, why?