The Manifest File and Common Controls

Common Controls

GFABASIC32 comes with many OCX Controls to allow input and output and these controls are underpinned by Windows' Common Controls library.

From Windows XP onwards, Microsoft allowed access to two versions of its Common Controls library: version 5 which retained the appearance and functionality found in Windows 98/ME; and version 6, originally termed as XP Styles, which matches the controls to the themes and styles of whichever version of Windows a program is run on, as well as adding additional functionality.

By default, Windows assumes any program will run using version 5, and GFABASIC32 is no different. If either the IDE or any program compiled by GFABASIC32 is run, all OCX controls will appear as they did in Windows 98/ME.

Manifest Files

To change the styles to those of Common Controls version 6, it is necessary to use a Manifest File. Manifest files can perform numerous tasks, but the file which is supplied with GFABASIC32 (see GfaWin32.exe.manifest) has only one task: to tell Windows to use Coomon Controls version 6 rather than the default version 5.

To effect this, the Manifest file can either be in stand-alone form or embedded in the executable program itself.

  • To create a stand-alone file, simply make a copy of the GFABASIC32's Manifest file, paste it into the folder which contains the executable file you wish to affect and change the Manifest's name to suit. For example, if you compile a program called 'program.exe', you would copy the GfaWin32.exe.manifest file into the same file as the compiled file and rename it 'program.exe.manifest'.

  • From IDE version 2.40 onwards, there is an option on the Compile form (Project -> Compile/Build) to 'Add Manifest Resource'; this embeds a Manifest file into the executable, doing away with the need to create a stand-alone file. For those with earlier versions of the IDE, Peter Heinzig created a program here which does exactly the same thing.

    • Known Issues

    There are a number of known issues where using a Manifest file does not make the desired transition from version 5 to version 6 of the Common Controls library. Some of the more common ones are:

    1. [Stand-alone only] If there a spaces in the filename of the executable - and thus in the accompanying stand-alone Manifest file - this can cause a failure; replacing the spaces in both files with underscores ('_') usually fixes this problem.
    2. Occasionally after a change to a compiled file or a Windows Update, controls can return to version 5; simply restarting the computer can, occasionally fix this problem.

    There are other issues which can arise with using Manifest files - they are generally Windows-wide rather than just GFABASIC32-specific - and they are dealt with in more detail in Sjouke Hamstra's blog here and here.

    {Created by James Gaite; Last updated: 03/03/2018 by James Gaite}