DotNet style for Windows

Posted by Jens Bache-Wiig on October 6, 2006 · 10 comments

Not too long ago, someone asked why we did not support dot net style in Qt. Although the name is a bit misleading, it means the look and feel that apps such as Office and Outlook currently use. These applications are like Qt based on the windows style engine, but for some of the components that the theme does not define they use a more fashionable gradient appearance.

To prove that Qt can actually support these styles, I wrote a plugin style for Qt 4.2. If there is sufficient interest we will of course consider making it available as a solution or even as a part of a future version of Qt.

Here is some eye candy:

Alternate style

And this is how it looks with the blue palette:

Alternate style 2

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10 comments

1 Barrett October 6, 2006 at 12:06 pm
 

Interested… very… do you have a download somewhere?

2 jbache October 6, 2006 at 12:30 pm
 

I’m glad you like it. It’s still a research project and not quite ready for production use. We’ll announce properly it when it is released.

3 Roy October 6, 2006 at 12:45 pm
 

I have to agree it can’t hurt to have :)

4 Sysedit October 6, 2006 at 10:41 pm
 

It can definitely be useful ! (and it will force us to port our second “still in Qt 3″ project” in a quicker way :) )

5 Geoff Wilson October 6, 2006 at 11:25 pm
 

Isn’t there a difference between “dotNet” style and what Office/Outlook uses?

My understanding was that Office/Outlook use custom C++ based controls that are built within Microsoft and not publically available. The Microsoft .NET framework also allows the creation of GUIs, for example, by creating an application in Visual Studio .NET using C# or VB.NET.

From my looking at the two styles, the “dotNet” style is simpler and is more an evolution of the style seen in Win 2000.

For what it’s worth, the “dotNet” style doesn’t look particularly good to my eye, so it would be better to have an MS Office style. Great work!

6 jbache October 7, 2006 at 12:04 am
 

Good point. I totally agree that the name is wrong. I used it because of the original thread on qt-interest. I’m not too happy with calling it “Office style” either though.

Actually the way you can enable this in Windows Forms is by setting the RenderMode property on tool bars and menu bars to “Professional” as opposed to “System” which is similar to what Qt currently uses on Windows.

One option would be to call it WindowsProfessional. Anyone have a better suggestion?

7 Zatraz October 8, 2006 at 7:27 am
 

Nice job. Would you considerer to release a beta version? I will glad test it :) .

8 fisher November 9, 2006 at 2:11 am
 

when do you give a release?

9 Imen November 9, 2006 at 2:37 am
 

I’m very interested. When would you have a release version? Would QT3.1 integrate this solution?

10 agentmulder November 28, 2006 at 1:09 am
 

I’m interested in applying the office style to some of my apps. Is this plugin somewhere available.

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