Using Vista Aero theme in XP WPF apps

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I found this article on the web recently which shows how to use the Vista Aero theme on XP in your WPF apps.

I found two things:
01: It is less complicated that the article states.
02: It is a bit different if you already have stuff in your app resources, such as styles or control templates etc.

So here are my steps
01: Add PresentationFramework.Aero to your applications References list. It is listed in the [.NET] tab.
02: Edit your App.xaml and change it from this

<Application.Resources>
  <!-- Your stuff here -->
</Application.Resources>

to this

<Application.Resources>
  <ResourceDictionary>
    <!-- Put your stuff here instead -->

    <ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
      <ResourceDictionary Source="/PresentationFramework.Aero;component/themes/aero.normalcolor.xaml"/>
    </ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
  </ResourceDictionary>
</Application.Resources>

Comments

Anonymous said…
Does this automatically make the background glassy? Like for example in those images: http://www.emilstefanov.net/Programming/VistaGlass.aspx
5 September 2008 at 04:52
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