Code Crunching

In my last entry on Vista Task Dialogs I asked whether one should use them on older systems (Windows XP, 9X, 2000, ...) as well, since their look is just different and unknown to the user. Jeremy North posted (may be biased ;)), that he would say yes. Many others said so too, since they perform for the end user much better, then a simple "Yes, No, Cancel Dialog."

However, most components will either work on Vista only (native RAD Studio) or always will display in the nice Vista style, which however, the rest of the application will not. Jeremy North pointed out, that his components support a global variable/setting to change this behavior and allow to display on the "old style." This works nicely and I think answers for me the question whether to use them in my applications or not. Thanks for the Hint, Jeremy, I am not so good at reading documentation...

Simply add the following code to your application to switch to the old "Windows style" display. This checks for Windows Vista and sets the variable accordingly. See below for the result running on Vista vs. Windows XP.

JSDialog.UseOldDialogStyle := SysUtils.Win32MajorVersion < 6;

JSDialog - Vista Task Dialog in Vista Style

JSDialog - Same Vista Task Dialog in older Windows Style