[VB6] Manifest Creator II

Well, if you are theming the controls, and don't like the way the theme is applied to some controls, not sure what anyone can say. The options seem to be just a couple: a) don't theme or b) subclass and draw the control yourself, c) use a custom control. You might be able to apply your own theme? In any case, that is a question that should be asked in the general VB forum section.

Edited: The frame is probably a button-like control behind the scenes. It uses a window-style that includes the value 7 which is also the value for BS_GROUPBOX. Based on that and the description of a group-box, sounds a lot like a frame. And if actually a 'button' behind the scenes, that would explain why the theme is taking precedence.

When manifesting the IDE to have it themed, that popup palette for color selection doesn't display correctly. The listbox of system colors works, but the palette is blank/erased. I have a remedy in an add-in that you can use. See this thread

Hi, I am a bit of a VB6 beginner and I am trying to get this to work start to finish. I can't seem to find a step-by-step guide from the beginning to setting this up and get this running with themes in my projects. The instructions seem to be spread out over multiple threads and I can't seem to put all the pieces together. I would very much appreciate if someone put together a step-by-step process or a video. Thanks for this wonderful resource, and would appreciate any help.

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Originally Posted by BobbyAxelrod112

Hi, I am a bit of a VB6 beginner and I am trying to get this to work start to finish. I can't seem to find a step-by-step guide from the beginning to setting this up and get this running with themes in my projects. The instructions seem to be spread out over multiple threads and I can't seem to put all the pieces together. I would very much appreciate if someone put together a step-by-step process or a video. Thanks for this wonderful resource, and would appreciate any help.

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Hi BobbyAxelrod112

I'm new to VBFORUMS and especially this topic but I am not new to forums in general.

I could be wrong but I don't think you will receive what you asked for unless the question is asked similar to...

"These is what I have done/tried/understand but I cannot figure out the next step."

This narrows down the answer to something manageable for the replier.

@BobbyAxelrod112. Not really sure what the question is. The steps are fairly straightforward
1. Create a valid manifest file
2. Add that manifest to a resource file and rename the resource item, if necessary: Type of 24 and ID of 1
3. Compile your project

The Manifest Creator can do steps 1 & 2 for you. Manifests apply to compiled applications, not when uncompiled within the IDE. The exception of course is if the IDE is manifested -- two ways of doing that.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by VanGoghGaming

It so happens that my project which needed a visual styles facelift also used several smaller frames inside one big frame so I was confronted with this bug right away. It seems that frames need to be hosted inside a container that has a DC (device context) and frame themselves don't have one, hence the need for the PictureBox.

I wasn't going to add PictureBoxes at design time so I figured I could create temporary PictureBoxes at run time! For some reason this didn't work inside the Form_Load event so I had to use Form_Activate and also needed to make sure the Activate event didn't fire more than once:

Code:

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Private Sub Form_Activate()
Dim xControl As Control, PicContainer As PictureBox, i As Long
Static bActivate as Boolean
    If bActivate Then Exit Sub
    bActivate = True
    i = 1
    For Each xControl In Me.Controls
        If TypeOf xControl Is Frame Then
            If TypeOf xControl.Container Is Frame Then
                Set PicContainer = Me.Controls.Add("VB.PictureBox", "PictureBox" & i, xControl.Container)
                i = i + 1
                With PicContainer
                    .BorderStyle = 0
                    .BackColor = xControl.Container.BackColor
                    .TabStop = False
                    .Visible = True          '<== ADDED
                End With
                With xControl
                    PicContainer.Move .Left, .Top, .Width, .Height
                    Set .Container = PicContainer
                    .Move 0, 0
                End With
            End If
        End If
    Next xControl
End Sub

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This code runs very nicely and provides a PictureBox container for each frame hosted inside a bigger frame. Hope this helps!

Edited. Thanks for the tip LaVolpe, you rock as usual!

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Maybe it's just my setup but I had to add '.Visible = True' line of code otherwise nothing showed.

If the author agrees then maybe just change the original code a few posts back and delete mine to reduce clutter or please enlighten me otherwise ):

Hi,
I've downloaded your Manifest Creator II and, when I tested it, I get the following:
Attachment 179571
I'm using Win 10.
Thank you

Hello,
can we use the manifest file to change the scrollbars of a controls?
For example when we are creating a dark theme of our app to apply the dark theme for the scrollbars?
Maybe if we change the theme of windows and to reflect this to the scrollbars?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Davor Geci

Hello,
can we use the manifest file to change the scrollbars of a controls?
For example when we are creating a dark theme of our app to apply the dark theme for the scrollbars?
Maybe if we change the theme of windows and to reflect this to the scrollbars?

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You can manifest the program to use Windows themes, also called Visual styles, and the controls that support visual styles will render with the visual style set on Windows (the theme).
But you cannot change its colors or the controls parts individually, because that is set by the windows theme.

Dark theme? Yes, set Windows to dark theme.

If you otherwise want to apply a different theme only to your program, Windows does not support that but there is a third party library that does (it is not free): https://codejock.com/products/skinfr.../?2yn6s14z=p1z

Hello LaVolpe, are you still active on VB6?

I used that language for a small updating tool, but recently Windows Defender made some trouble with false alarms (but not on my own system). Therefore I wanted to try adding a manifest and see, if that helps...

I downloaded one from the web, changed the values by hand and used it side by side. To test it, I put the value "requireAdministrator" in it. I thought, if it is working, it will prompt the UAC dialog. - But this did not happen.
That is, why I tried your tool, but I am having some difficulties with it.

Ich am getting the error, which you posted above (just not in English), when compiling and running your tool:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LaVolpe

Compilation Errors
Should you see an error like the following once your app is compiled...
Attachment 180850
... There are two possible reasons for it:
1. Your embedded manifest file size is not a multiple of 4 bytes. This is a bug with VB6 that SP6 fixed. If you don't have SP6 applied, do so. That fixes a lot more than the problem just mentioned. This tool now ensures it writes dword-aligned manifests to resource files anyway.

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I installed SP6, but the about dialog of VB6 does not show it. - Is this normal? (I am having VS6)

Because of the exception, which I mentioned above, I did start your project by running it in the VBE. But its main window did not show any entries (just some checkboxes without a caption).

If you want to use the "requireAdministrator" flag then your EXE file needs to be digitally signed with a certificate. You can either purchase such a certificate from a recognized certification authority like DigiCert, Comodo, etc (costs a fair chunk of cash and requires submitting a lot of personally identifying paperwork) OR you can generate your own certificate (with the "makecert" utility) but that won't be recognized as valid by the operating system.

You could make your certificate recognizable as valid by making yourself a "Certification Authority" (also with the "makecert" utility) and adding it to the Root certificates repository with the "certutil" utility (certutil -user -addstore Root yourcertificateauhority.cer). The problem with this approach is that you need to run that command on every computer where you want to use your application. It's ok if your customers trust you with your application though.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by thomasaj05

Maybe it's just my setup but I had to add '.Visible = True' line of code otherwise nothing showed.

If the author agrees then maybe just change the original code a few posts back and delete mine to reduce clutter or please enlighten me otherwise ):

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You are correct, I have checked my code and indeed it needs the line:

Code:

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.Visible = xControl.Visible

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I have added it in the above post as well!

Any plans to adapt this for Windows 11?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by KenHorse

Any plans to adapt this for Windows 11?

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Ken, LaVolpe has left us. He got another job that wasn't VB6 related and said sayonara to us, so I believe you're on your own.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Elroy

Ken, LaVolpe has left us. He got another job that wasn't VB6 related and said sayonara to us, so I believe you're on your own.

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Ok thanks. I'm slowly getting VB6 IDE going under Win11 on an VM on my Win10 computer and have many things worked out (including the serial comm now). I just noticed that the manifest additions don't seem to be working, at least not yet :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Elroy

Ken, LaVolpe has left us. He got another job that wasn't VB6 related and said sayonara to us, so I believe you're on your own.

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VB6 is like "Hotel California", you can always check out but you can never leave! ;)

You don't need this program to create manifests, they work just fine edited in Notepad...

That's the beauty of LaVolpe's Creator. You don't really need to know what you're doing :eek:

For what it's worth, according to the docs the value of the <supportedOS> tag is the same for Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019 and Windows Server 2022. Unless there are other changes, there's nothing to worry about.

A cursory glance shows only this change: the <activeCodePage> tag isn't limited to UTF-8 anymore with Windows 11. I might be wrong, though.

Oh, sad to hear this.

LaVolpe is the most valuable person in our VB classic world. Hope he comes back to see us soon.

PLEASE IGNORE THIS POST! I NOW REALISE I MADE A SIMILAR POST 5 YEARS AGO. My excuse? I'm getting old...

Having used Make My Manifest in the past, with complete success, I now get problems with running VB6 programs on Windows 10 using external manifest files. To be fair, several of my programs work fine on W10 "out of the box", so to speak. I just copy the main folder from XP to Windows 10 and the program runs. But there's one particular program which is fairly straightforward that will not run on W10 and throws all kinds of errors.

So I started researching SxS in more depth and found Manifest Creator II v2.03, but I just cannot get started with it. I cannot find any instructions on how to use it. I also tried Manifest Creator I, the first version, and that is slightly more intuitive, but II just leaves me floundering. There's a long list of checkboxes with little explanation on how to proceed.

Has anyone produced a detailed guide to using this tool, which is obviously capable, given the number of comments I see.

Right now, I'm building a new manifest the hard way by using mt.exe to extract dependencies, following the very excellent tutorial by Elroy "Using OCX Files with SxS Technology".

Yes, I am proudly resurrecting an old thread.
I've read much info on the pros and cons on .manifest directives,
so where do we sit on philosophy and logic, now: June 01, 2023 ?

I like your style...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by taishan

Yes, I am proudly resurrecting an old thread.
I've read much info on the pros and cons on .manifest directives,
so where do we sit on philosophy and logic, now: June 01, 2023 ?

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Unfortunately MS has only doubled down on pushing manifests. There's even more reasons now why you want one with not just common controls, but also trustinfo and compatibility sections.