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Asked: 2026-05-18T03:50:24+00:00

My Win32 Application displays Menus as shown when running on Win 7: This is

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My Win32 Application displays Menus as shown when running on Win 7:
alt text

This is the Default for the themes Windows 7 as well as Windows 7 Aqua.
Please note that the selected menu entry is only slightly different from the other entries. I think it is much too less highlighted and therefore i am looking for a way to give the selected entry a different color. But unfortunately all possibilities to modify menu colors disappeared in Windows 7. The settings made in the window color dialog are non effective for menus.

But amazingly Microsoft’s own applications look different. I.e. Paint has different color and appearance of menus:

alt text

This has good contrast and is much better than the default for a Win32 application.
Also Visual Studio 2010 looks different:

alt text

I know that VS 2010 is build on WPF. I don’t know if and how the ribbon, used in paint influences the menu appearance. My menus are set up dynamically using SetMenu();

My Question: Is there any way to change the appearance of my applications menu using a API or maybe a manifest or resource?
Or is there a way to modify the color of the selected menu entry in Windows 7 through settings?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You can make your own user drawn menus. For an example, take a look at this CodeProject.com article: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/menus/newmenuxpstyle.aspx

    Also, VS 2010 is not entirely built on WPF – only the code editor.

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