Wyatt Says...

This will be the quickest tip you’ll ever read. But first, some background. If run your .NET app on Windows Vista or Windows 7 unaltered you might notice the fonts look a little funky. Especially when compared to Microsoft’s own apps. See the ugly font in the window on the right:

On the left I’m using the default system font in Windows Vista & 7: Segoe UI. On the right I’m using the default font that every Windows Forms app uses: Microsoft Sans Serif. It’s quite obvious that the Segoe UI font is slightly larger and more legible. Not only that, but if you use the font on the right instead – the Microsoft Sans Serif – your app will be out of place in Windows Vista & 7, since every other app in Vista & 7 uses the Segoe UI font.

Problem: Segoe UI isn’t in Pre-Vista systems

The problem is that Segoe UI is only shipped with Vista & 7 versions of Windows. So you can’t just hard-code the Font property of the form to be Segoe UI (or your app will look like utter crap in Windows 2000 & Windows XP).

And thus this simple snippet of code to use Segoe UI on Windows Vista & 7 while still using the default system font in Windows 98, 2000 & XP.

public Form1()
{
    // use Segoe UI in Vista & 7
    Font = SystemFonts.MessageBoxFont;

    InitializeComponent();
}

Or, in VB.NET:

Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
    ' use Segoe UI in Vista & 7
    Font = SystemFonts.MessageBoxFont
End Sub

That’s all you have to do to use Segoe UI font in your app. And if you set the AutoScaleMode of the form to “Font” then all of the controls on the form will scale to fit the larger font:

Bold font problem

What if you want to bold a title? Simple, right? Just click the Font property of the label you want to bold:

However, the problem with doing this is now every control on the form except the label you want to bold will be Segoe UI font. Why is this? Every control on your form will have the same font as the parent unless specified otherwise.

In our case the parent is the Form and we’re explicitly setting the font to be bold for our label to be “Bold Microsoft Sans Serif”.

“Ok, ok – but how do I make a bold label use Segoe UI?”

We just learned you won’t be able to do it in the designer, so instead you’ll have to do it in code:

public Form1()
{
    // use Segoe UI in Vista & 7
    Font = SystemFonts.MessageBoxFont;

    InitializeComponent();

    // set the title to be bold
    lblTitle.Font = new Font(Font, FontStyle.Bold);
}

Or in VB.NET

Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
    ' use Segoe UI in Vista & 7
    Font = SystemFonts.MessageBoxFont

    ' set the title to be bold
    lblTitle.Font = New Font(Font, FontStyle.Bold)
End Sub

7 Days of Windows 7

Join me tomorrow when I talk about adding professional looking menus to your app. See the full list of articles in the series.

For the next 7 Days I’ll be giving 7 C# & .NET tips to make your Windows application look like it was built for Vista and Windows 7. All of these tips are used in our products (wyBuild, wyUpdate, and LimeLM) and they range from the simple one-liner, free open source controls, and to the advanced tip.

And since wyBuild, wyUpdate, and LimeLM are all compatible with Windows 2000 through Windows 7 all of these tips will be backward compatible.

7 days of Windows 7

Day 1: Windows Vista & 7 Font, Segoe UI, in C# and VB.NET
Day 2: Making the menus in your .NET app look professional
Day 3: Windows 7 Progress Bar in .NET
Day 4: Drag & drop icons in .NET – Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and 7
Day 5: Shield icons, UAC, and process elevation in .NET on Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and 7
Day 6: Windows Vista and Windows 7 .NET Controls – Every possible one you could ever want
Day 7: Finishing touches: Make your .NET app shine with professionalism

Windows 7 will be available for download to MSDN and Technet subscriber in less than 2 weeks. I thought I’d introduce a few controls to make Windows 7 development easier for C# and .NET programmers. The controls will be written for .NET 2.0 & Windows Forms, but will obviously be compatible with .NET 2.0, 3.0, 3.5 and the upcoming 4.0.

The first control I want to give you is a way to use the new progress bar in your app’s taskbar icon. This is what the new taskbar progress bar looks like when Internet Explorer downloads a file:

Of course, what good is integrating this shiny new behavior into your apps if isn’t backward compatible with Windows 2000, XP and Vista? None at all. And since this taskbar behavior is included in wyUpdate & wyBuild 2.2+, backwards compatibility is a must. Here’s our Windows 7 Progress Bar running on Windows 2000 – Windows 7:

Don’t use the Taskbar Progress Bar

Like any new shiny piece of technology everyone wants to add it to their program. The flip side is that most of the times you shouldn’t use it. Let me quote the Windows UX guide directly:

Is the progress feedback useful and relevant while using other programs? That is, are users likely to monitor the progress while using other programs, and change their behavior as a result? Such useful and relevant status is usually displayed using a modeless progress dialog box or a dedicated progress page, but not with a busy pointer, activity indicator, or progress bar on a status bar. If the status isn’t useful when using other programs, just display the progress feedback directly in the program itself.

Correct:

Incorrect:

In the incorrect examples, the taskbar button progress bars aren’t very useful.

Is the task continuous? If the task never completes, there’s no need to show its progress. Examples of continuous tasks include antivirus scans and file indexing.

Incorrect:

In this example, a continuous task doesn’t need to show progress.

By the way, the Windows User Experience Interaction Guidelines is a must read for all Windows Developers. It’s a shit name (why not Windows Usability Guide?), but it has quite a few good tips. All I can ask is that you skim it once.

How we use the Taskbar progress bar in wyUpdate & wyBuild

We’ve integrated the Windows 7 Taskbar progress bar in both wyBuild & wyUpdate. Here’s wyBuild creating updates for Nero Burning ROM:

Here’s wyUpdate installing an update:

Further Reading

• Progress Bars from the WUXIG (Windows User Experience Interaction Guidelines): All you ever wanted to know about progress bars
• Windows 7 taskbar design guidelines from the WUXIG: Everything you’ve ever wanted to know about designing for the Widows 7 taskbar.
• Introducing the Taskbar APIs: C++ code for integrating your app with Windows 7

Get Windows 7 Progress Bar Now

The latest version of the Windows 7 Progress Bar C# source code, example projects in VB.NET and C#, and binaries are available on the open source component page.

If you have any questions, or find any bugs you can report them in the comments or in the wyDay forum.