In Vista it looks like Theming has kind of gone by the wayside. I’m in the process of updating a 1.1 WinForm app to 2.0 and I happen to be doing it on Vista. The first thing that I noticed about Vista is how bland user interface used for most standard applications. This appears to be because the Vista Aero and the Aero basic themes are basically a washed out  white on offwhite color scheme that is horrible for existing themed applications.

Here’s an example of two applications and then also Office 2007 which obviously doesn’t use the OS themes:

The first application is my West Wind Web Store offline application that uses Sandbar Toolbars for the menuing and toolbars. Even with 2.0 providing good toolbar support now I still prefer the Sandbar controls, because they are easier to work with and they render faster with better detail. The second example is a .NET 2.0 WinForms application that uses the stock WinForms Toolbar controls and menus.

As you can see both of those are really white with offwhite backgrounds. No doubt the toolbars are usable and even readable, but it’s still a far cry from the theming support that was previously available.

Outlook 2007 on the other hand seems to be using a complete hand picked color scheme that isn’t affected by any of the Aero color schemes. Aero color schemes seem to have no affect whatsoever on the client area of standard applications. The Outlook colors look different but the colors are very neutral and seem to be picked in such a way that they would look good with just about any type of color scheme.

So, I wonder what the best guidelines are at this point to build Windows Forms applications that look good in Vista. I know looking at the default formatting above that that is both hard to read and too ‘bright’ to deal with day in and day out, besides looking – well, boring. It’s sort of like looking at the Windows 98 UI today <g> or running Windows in classic mode.

Just for kicks I experimented around a bit with SandBar and with a little tweaking I was able to make it render customized color schemes for almost everything to let me simulate a similar color scheme to that used by Outlook, but that’s basically overriding every one of the color settings. This seems really extreme, especially since most applications have this sort of default themes aware rendering in place.

If you look at Microsoft applications that come with Windows they either look as bland as the above (for example the IIS 7 Service Manager), or they are completely custom drawn user interface like Live Messenger:
 

Custom backgrounds, no menus (actually you can activate it), even custom close box etc. Most of the Microsoft dialogs seem to follow this model, of much more graphical layout for pages and more and more derivation from the Windows Standard.

I was talking with Markus yesterday, and Mr. UI (<g>) thinks that the days of the common Windows UI are numbered. With Windows Presentation Foundation coming out with Vista, there’s going to be major user interface fragmentation happening. While it looks like WPF will not be a starter for common applications, since the tools for building typical business applications are really not there, I’m going to guess that consumer applications especially are going to take advantage of WPF’s rich capabilities. This in turn will likely raise the bar for what is considered a professional looking application.

I really shudder at the thought of the average developer (or myself <g>) trying to build a nice looking UI with expectations to have nicely laid out backgrounds and color matched schemes. And not just for WPF but for WinForms applications. Just getting the color combinations right is a chore.

I know a number of people who are really good with UI design. And while the apps they create are beautiful and just ‘feel’ better to use because of it, even these capable folks will tell you that it takes a huge amount of effort to design and build a nice UI.  At least currently Windows Themes had been kind of guiding us into a common direction. It looks like this is thing of the past…