A friend of mine had been using the standalone version of FlexBuilder 2 and recently switched to the plugin version. He noticed that the IDEs looked different - the standalone version sported the Windows XP theme, whereas the plugin version didn't.
This isn't so much of a FlexBuilder trick as just a regular Eclipse trick. Because Eclipse is built on SWT, the widgets have the ability to take on the native look of the underlying operating system. The problem is that on Windows they default to the classic look.
The solution is a file named javaw.exe.manifest. In order to instruct SWT to draw with the Windows XP theme, the manifest file needs to placed next to the javaw.exe file that is used to launch Eclipse. By default, Adobe has taken care of this for you with the standalone version of FlexBuilder 2. If you're using a regular Eclipse installation with the plugin version of FlexBuilder 2, you have to do this step yourself.
It's an easy fix. Download javaw.exe.manifest from Eclipse.org and simply place it in the directory where javaw.exe is located. On my system, this was in C:\WINDOWS\system32. A simple restart of Eclipse does the trick and loads the Windows XP theme for the UI widgets.
4 Comments
Doesn't seem to do anything for me. What exactly should look different?
Posted by: Ben | July 25, 2006 8:50 AM
See the sceenshot here for a side-by-side of buttons in the About Dialog: http://vineet.i3labs.org/wp/wp-content/xpthemes.png
Posted by: darron | July 25, 2006 9:00 AM
I was not aware you could use the windows XP theme with flex builder 2. I thought the old version of the swc would not work. Is there an updated version that you can use with the stand alone version. If so, is it just a theme entry in the flex-config.xml file?
Thanks.
Posted by: Todd Anderson | July 25, 2006 4:22 PM
Just to be clear, this is to make the FlexBuilder *IDE* (i.e. Eclipse) use the the Windows XP theme, and *NOT* to theme Flex 2 applications (.swf files).
Posted by: darron | July 25, 2006 7:56 PM